Product Description
About the Mill Accordion Way Cover Set
The advent of CNC has increased the demand for a good way to keep chips and coolant off your Y-axis leadscrew. We discovered the plans for these accordion way covers several years ago, but making them by hand was such a time-consuming process we didn’t put them into production. Demand finally reached the point where we decided to purchase the tooling to cut and score the plastic so they would be easy to produce in quantity. Some clever design on the part of Pam Weiss and Karl Rohlin allows the covers to install very easily on your mill with springs holding them in place rather than the rubber bands of the previous design. The rear cover simply slips over the column. The front plate set is held in place with another spring that wraps under the stepper motor mount (CNC machines) or under the handwheel thrust collar (Manual machines). The two inner plates are held against the saddle using two 4″ long 10-32 bolts. A longer saddle lock thumbscrew is also provided to give your fingers room for adjustment with the long bolts in place. Complete, illustrated step-by-step instructions are included, and installation takes only a few minutes.
NOTE: This Y-axis cover was designed to work on Sherline machines. They were not designed to work with any aftermarket parts such as limit switches, stops, etc.
Upgraded Material
Our way cover material has recently been upgraded. The new polypropylene material is more durable and is resilient enough to better withstand the temperature of hot chips. The material itself is more opaque and is 10 mil, versus the clear, 5 mil of the previous version (mil=0.001″).
What is included:
Front and rear cover sets have the accordion plastic covers already riveted in place. Included are the front and rear cover set, two attachment bolts and locking nuts, two attachment springs (one already attached to the rear cover set, and an extra long saddle lock thumbscrew.
CAUTION: The way covers will not work if you have done any customization to the mill base ways, such as adding sensors. They cannot slide over any impedance that you may have added.
