Emco FB2 Quirks and Additions

[mgnbukParticipant @mgnbuk]

Mine broke when I was facing at 1200rpm, 1mm depth of cut in steel (355N/mm2) with a 40mm cutter with 3 carbide inserts.

That was optimistic !

Not surprised the gear gave up at that.

I am on my second Taiwanese FB2 clone. The first had a brass gear fitted by the original owner after he had lost enthusiasm for paying £100+ (30 years ago) for replacement fibre gears & had a friend in a gear company make a brass replacement (and a spare I still have). I made up an arbor to hold a 40mm 3 flute insert face cutter for that machine and used it once – not happy with the noises coming out of the gearbox, even with the brass gear !

Current machine still on it’s factory fibre gear after 25 years + – but not used inserted cutters on it (prefer HSS cutters – mainly 3 flute coated end mills –  in 2MT collets), rarely use a fly cutter & always use the awkward spanner to hold the spindle when using the drawbar.

John MC – cutting a replacement helical gear from another material is an option, if you have the tooling and machinery to do so. Difficult, though, if the only mill you have is the one that requires the replacement gear.

If a 3D replacement can be quickly and inexpensively produced (my test items take about an hour to print at 100% infill & use less than 50g of filament that costs around £10 kilo) that will work at least as well as the original Tufnol gear, then why not use this route ? Feedback from Richard for a PETG gear is that the machine runs more quietly with this than the fibre original, but durability is yet to be determined.

Jim – thanks for the feedback. Did you anneal the nylon print after printing ? Seen filament testing videos that suggest that PA6 gains strength from annealing (100C for about an hour IIRC). Hoping that “Black Friday” will have offers that make an enclosed heated chamber printer with a higher temp hot end affordable to play with “engineering” filaments.

Nigel B.

[engineeredbyhanssonParticipant @engineeredbyhansson]

Jim – thanks for the feedback. Did you anneal the nylon print after printing ? Seen filament testing videos that suggest that PA6 gains strength from annealing (100C for about an hour IIRC). Hoping that “Black Friday” will have offers that make an enclosed heated chamber printer with a higher temp hot end affordable to play with “engineering” filaments.

Nigel B.

 

No I didn’t anneal it afterwards. It holds up very well still, but I don’t take that heavy cuts anymore. More like 0,5mm at 680rpm maximum.

I printed my gear in a Bambu Lab P1S  so nothing fancy. Let it heat soak for a while and don’t open until it has properly cooled down. 3D printing the gear is probably the most economical way. I actually tried PETG first, but it’s too brittle. Mine broke after just some medium cuts..

Jim

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