Dane.Kouttron

[01.10.22]  5th Axis CNC add-on

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What?
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Conclusion Image Directory

Project Background





Step 0: These are some really neat servo axes

Bell-Everman makes a really neat servo drive stage, instead of impossible to replace expensive harmonic drives they use a really nice zero backlash timing belt and a swanky servo motor. As a result you get great performance with serviceable parts. These are also fairly low profile, making them useful for increasing the volume of a 5th axis. As it turns out these drives were used on a remarkably high precision polar-coordinate-ish multi-axis dental CNC.

Lets dig some more and find-out more about these.
Taking a look at the dental contraption

Here's some interesting details about the contraption that these rotary axes were from. These axes were used in the TS-150 dental Mill

The spindle is on the right of the photo shown and the work-holding is on the left. The work-holder itself is a rotary axis on a perpendicular rotary axis. The spindle appears to translate in and out of the right most rotary axes. Some of the details in the write-up that includes these details [link] calls out a 'ServoNut actuator' [link]. This thing is incredibly compact.
Quick demo of the dental contraption that uses the servo stage

The rotary stages are going pretty hard in some of the actual demos, with a 150k RPM air spindle going really hard at a ceramic. I don't quite get how the perpendicular-to-rotary axis work-holder rotates but otherwise, this is amazing. This particular vintage of machine [TS-150] was discontinued in 2019, and













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(There's other photos in the photo gallery)
Concluding Remarks:

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5th axis

Dane.Kouttron
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 
Electrical & Electrical Power
631.978.1650