[campbellqn]

Hello all, new to the forum and had a quick question to see if any of you had addressed it.

At work our tormach pnc1100 has a full enclosure, but the doors seem to stick quite a bit. Has anyone figured out another rail/guide situation for the top end? To the me steel tube/eye hooks seem to be an after thought solution.

Thanks

[Steve Seebold]

I have an 1100 with the full enclosure as well. I added the enclosure to my machine about 3 years ago, and for my application, had I known then what I know now, I probably would not have added it.

[GLCarlson]

There must be at least a dozen home-brew enclosure threads here, along with a few on the commercial enclosure. Suggest you search the forum backfiles. That said, I don't recall anything specifically on the commercial enclosure problem you describe (which suggests that it's either not widespread, or it's one of those "oh, bother" kinds of problems that everyone lives with). Trouble is, once you start fixing design problems you're not making money.

[saabaero]

Hello all, new to the forum and had a quick question to see if any of you had addressed it.

At work our tormach pnc1100 has a full enclosure, but the doors seem to stick quite a bit. Has anyone figured out another rail/guide situation for the top end? To the me steel tube/eye hooks seem to be an after thought solution.

Thanks

At first I had serious reservations with the eye bolt design but didn’t want to spend time replacing it with something better. So I just lubed the rods up with some thick synthetic grease and have to say that the doors seem to slide so easily that the thought of the eye bolts has never entered my mind since. In a way it is a pretty bulletproof design in that it is not affected by contamination as is the sliding door with plastic rollers and aluminum tracks on the Slant Pro lathe. The design, at first, seems more elegant but I have had to disassemble it several times to get small metal chips out of it that embed into the plastic rollers and wear away at the aluminum rails.

[al010964]

I have the 770 full enclosure and expect it is probably the same. Two things I did (1) check the screw lengths as the screws supplied are a little long and catch, (note these are the screws that hold the enclosure together from the front). (2) smear a very lite film of grease on the rail.

Mine always use to catch until I sorted the screws up.

Cheers,
Adrian

[nitewatchman]

When my enclosure arrived the round rods were bent plus I did not like the whole concept of the eye bolts riding on the rods. I decided to do something different.

I used a length of 1"x 2" T-Slot Framing from McMaster-Carr (https://www.mcmaster.com/#47065t107/=19j56kl) and 3-D Printed End Supports and Door Sliders. I am very happy with the outcome. Looks good, works good and doesn't rattle.

gary

[cncbuilt]

When my enclosure arrived the round rods were bent plus I did not like the whole concept of the eye bolts riding on the rods. I decided to do something different.

I used a length of 1"x 2" T-Slot Framing from McMaster-Carr (https://www.mcmaster.com/#47065t107/=19j56kl) and 3-D Printed End Supports and Door Sliders. I am very happy with the outcome. Looks good, works good and doesn't rattle.

gary

Wow very nice job on those 3D printed brackets. Can you share the file? I would love to do this mod....my sliding door drives me nuts 5 times a day


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[al010964]

+1 that is is sweet! Gary

[campbellqn]

Wow thats awesome, and exactly the kind of thing I was looking for!. ditto on sending the stl for the slider holder. I will grease in the mean time.

[nitewatchman]

Wow thats awesome, and exactly the kind of thing I was looking for!. ditto on sending the stl for the slider holder. I will grease in the mean time.

Give me a few days to add some additional clearance to the fits. Mine printed a little tight.

Gary

[cncbuilt]

Thank you Gary !!!!
So you are using the 2" wide track allowing the outside door to slide using the gray linear bearing you printed out while the inside door can slide on the opposite side of the track with the white linear bearing correct?


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[nitewatchman]

That's right, there is no magic to the different colors, just what I had on the printer.

The doors are flushed up to the slide blocks but the tee slots allow them to be adjusted plumb individually.

gary

[nitewatchman]

Give me a few days to add some additional clearance to the fits. Mine printed a little tight.

Gary

Sorry it took longer to get to than I planned but I have added clearance to the files to allow the doors to slide easier.

The parts attach together with 1/4" tee-nuts or tee-nut joiners for the 1"x 2" aluminum rail. The two end blocks attach to the top of the enclosure using four 1/4" bolts and tee-nuts, also you have to drill these holes. Everything else uses existing holes and or holes in the printed parts. There are two tee-nuts from the end block to the cabinet and one tee-nut from the rail to the end block times two, one for each end of the rail. There is then one tee-nut per door runner and it uses the hole provided for the original eyebolts. This should make 14 tee-nuts total and 10 printed parts.

I printed the parts solid using ABS but that may not be necessary. If you have trouble or the parts are still to tight or loose we will take another shot at the size. If you want to try these but don't have a printer, I can print them for you but there is a lot of plastic and time in them if they are printed solid.


Good luck and I hope these fit your needs.


gary

[GLCarlson]

When my enclosure arrived the round rods were bent plus I did not like the whole concept of the eye bolts riding on the rods. I decided to do something different.

I used a length of 1"x 2" T-Slot Framing from McMaster-Carr (https://www.mcmaster.com/#47065t107/=19j56kl) and 3-D Printed End Supports and Door Sliders. I am very happy with the outcome. Looks good, works good and doesn't rattle.

gary

I did the same thing, with 80/20 1" industrial erector set and some shop made nylon sliders. Probably should have used the 1x2 stuff for the top rail, but the original solution is now about 7 years old and still slides fine. Looks almost identical to your much more elegant version. So, maybe an easy fix is a piece of 80/20 and a bit of machining.