Look forward to the the pics

Hood

Yep I'll have to get some of them sorted. Thanks for the confirmation CJ (john) I may just have a go at it.

Hi Perfo, Yep. just make sure that the center of the cutting edge is exactly on the center line or you will get an offset keyway slot and the pulley will never fit the shaft. I made a few cuts and then double checked by offering the shaft to the pulley.

If you do go wrong with it your only recourse to saving the pulley is to make an offset key to fit shaft and pulley which can be a pain in the butt.



Cheers
John

If you do screw up you have another option to cut another keyway further round, not ideal but wont make too much difference to the strength of the pulley. I often have to do this on the pulleys etc for the boats as the keyways have been damaged.

 Another option would be to cut an ovesize keyway to straighten it up then machine a step key to suit.

Obviously the best option is to take care when you do cut it but just thought I would mention the above as it may help you in the future if you need to repair a pulley with a damaged keyway.

Hood

Some good advice there chaps thanks.
Well I still haven't heard from BSL but my box of bits turned up this morning from AFC. Before ordering I asked them for a price on machining the bores etc and confirmed the sizes I wanted, but alas they couldn't do it and a gent down the road that could was going to double my costs so DIY it was. Only thing is even though I had confirmed the bore sizes with them ie 9.5 mm on all the small pulleys  I got a 10 tooth pulley through the post where the boss and bottom of the teeth only turned out to be about 9.8 mm so I cant use it grrrrrr. HPC had told me I needed T10 on this axis but then I was told no you don't, T5 will do, just make the belt wider. OK I thought that sounds logical for increasing the power capabilities but won't having a smaller pitch mean that the diameter for 10 teeth would be too small for a 9.5mm bore? Nope I was told the max bore is 13 mm on these.  Unfortunately the person giving me the details read the wrong bit in the book or something. Anyway no complaints about their customer service as they were quite apologetic and promise to sort it out first thing on Monday it looks like I can get a 10 tooth and 72 tooth pair with a 1/2 belt if I go for imperial (3/8 pitch) so that's what I'm doing. I did have another radical idea on the keying front and that was due to me not using the handles on the axis any more Id either fix the pulleys to the handle some how or turn down the handle and bore out the pulley to get a nice tight fit and a spot of weld to finish off.

Oh did I say I was going to spend this morning trying to powder coat my frames ? What I meant was I was going to go shopping and buy a new bed   Bl****dy H*** the price of mattresses and beds...I could get a nice Mill (or even a pulley or two from HPC) for that price I thought.

Just looking back at the pics WantCNC posted my steppers look a lot bigger than his (no not showing off ) his look like twin shaft and about 6 mm where as mine have single shaft and 9.5mm. I don't mind them being more powerful than need be it'll mean more scope to up the speed if ever I need too or even go 1:1 on the ratios.

LOL, well just think yourself lucky you didnt get the bed from HPC

Hood

Doesn't bear thinking ABOUT
It wasn't a completely wasted day yesterday on the CNC front. I finished putting all the electro gubbins in my rack mounted box and Conected up the motors (yet to finish the plug and socket arrangement). I felt like a right electro newby I couldn't get the steppers to run smooth they turned ok but very juddery. I tried tuning. incidentally when I'm on the motor tuning page my motors don't turn when I press page up and down as per motor tuning instructions  I have to save then exit the tuning to get them to move with the keyboard. Anyway hours wasted trying to tune trying different micro steps etc etc. Then came to the conclusion I must have a cable or two wrong on the steppers even though I was fairly confident this is how I connected them before. I got them from motion control products but unfortunately their PD data sheet for these motors have different wire colours on than mine. I eventually found this site
http://harmonfamily.us/stepper_motor_wiring.htm
Which proved pretty helpful and indeed confirmed I had a few cables wrong. Put them right and the steppers became classical music rather than house music Typical I thought if they hadn't turned at all I would have checked the wiring but being a novice I wasn't sure that having the wrong set up on the Acc and velocity could cause juddery motion or even the set up of my drivers...anyway all good now

Yes thats the only thing about the SS, not sure if you will ever be able to move the motors from the tuning window but certainly not possible at the moment.

Hood