[autobot]

Ive seen many videos on youtube and pictures of home systems with benchtop machines, and most of the time people don't put any sort of dust cover over their threads or linear rails. Occasionally some will put a piece of paper to kind of block off most of it, and the rare occasional ones where a dust cover is put on (but they often still leave the Z axis rail open for example). They tend to just mill away creating a lot of dust. Wouldnt that potentially cause wearing of their machine?

I guess the problem ultimately is the benchtop machines are often very bare bones and have the rails and threads exposed to chips/dust. Does it matter too much? I mean if the metal or whatever chips are small enough, they can get caught in the grease on the rail or threads, and overtime may cause increased wear on the machine, which can eventually affect precision of their machine also.

[keebler303]

There are many reasons:

Can be expensive
Pain in the butt to install
May reduce machine travels
Big hurry to get it working and bypass non essentials (excitement)

I think really most hobbiests assume their use is limited and they will lose interest or upgrade before it becomes an issue. Of course it would be better if it was shielded but it will take a while to realize the damage it is causing.

Matt

[Fastest1]

Well maybe the wear isnt as bad as anticipated especially in the Z. Also none of it will last forever. I find that pieces of a flexible cutting board do a fine job, panty hose too in 1 of my videos.

[Larken]

You see a lot of hobby machines cutting wood with exposed Ballscrews. Eventually dust will get in the nut and cause random jamming, especially with steppers.
No commercial machine would ever be sold with exposed ball screws.

But like you say, they just want to see it run now ! we'll add the bells and whistles later.

[arizonavideo]

I used to spend my Saturday afternoons cleaning out the dust buildup from my over clocked CPU cooler but now I clean and re stack my my ballnuts.

[TXFred]

No commercial machine would ever be sold with exposed ball screws.

Haas TL-3 lathes run exposed ballscrews and rails.

However, the bearing blocks on this machine have grease fittings, so you can use a grease gun to push the old grease and dirt back out once in a while.

But I agree with you, it's not good practice.

Frederic