G0704 Head tilt jammed?!?

great white

great white

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I've got a Craftex CX 601 (rebranded g0704). The plastic high low gear stripped and I started to disassemble the head to get to it.

Part of the process is tilting the head to remove the access plate on the rear of the head. All went normal until I tilted the head. It stops at roughly 45 degrees. No problem says I, I'll just tilt it the opposite way to get the last screw out.

Well, I go to raise the head and "thunk". One of the bolts is hitting something behind the head and stopping the head from rotating. At this point, I can't even put the head back to vertical. It's stubbornly stuck at 45.

I've tried just about everything I can with regards to the bolts: tighten them, try to gently move them around as I lift the head, turn and pulling case the bolt head needs to drop into a boss on the back, etc. Nothing works. The head is firmly stuck in the 45 degree position.

What am I missing?

This is so frustrating I'm just about to loose my mind......I can take apart and put together supersonic aircraft but I can't figure out what is stopping this friggin head from tilting?

Arrrrgghhhh!!!!!
 
Nevermind. Found out what the problem was. There must be a "detent" of something at the 45 degree point and that was hanging up the bolt. Jus thad to get it aligned just right and it moved past the detent.
 
Well, you did find the solution in "no time". It took me 3 years to find a small grub screw that prevented me to take off the head of my mill.
 
Well, got the H/L gear changed out.

Man, what a PITA that was!

H/L selector spring and balls making thier bid for freedom, then the pita of trying to get them back together. Then any number of bolts that would only turn a 1/4 turn before the key hits something. Bolts in a postion where you can't get more than a squeak of a turn on bolts next to them. The magnets in the motor "stealing" my tools when I got too close. The grease everywhere. Having to pick literally every...single...tooth clean of the old gear shrapnel. The RPM sensor getting bent, filled with grease and having to take it all apart to rebuild it and put it back together. The odd sized bolts and grub screws (metric and imperial on the same machine these days? Pick one and stay with it!). Snap rings in difficult to reach place. having to press bearings out/in the housing to get the shaft out. And on and on and on.

Definitely not a maintenance friendly process. I mean really; if you're going to put a plastic gear in teh drive train to protect things from crashes at least make a way to get to it easily.

Not something I'm looking forward to doing again, which WILL happen again as long as there's a plastic gear in there.

The gear is my 3d printed one. Done in ABS. Running fine so far. We'll see how it holds up.

Time to print off a couple more gears....just in case.
 
Well, not sure what happened, but it appears the mill doesn't like slitting saws. New gear is stripped, perhaps split. I have to remove the inspection plate again to know for sure.

I'm quite PO's after going through all that frustration for it to fail in less than 5 mins of use.

I've contacted busy bee as the mill is still under warranty for a replacement gear.

I'll probably try printing out another while I'm waiting. Nothing to loose at this point.....
 
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heard back from busy bee:

"Hello,

Thank you for contacting Busy bee tools.

#212 is a consumable/sacrificial gear, and it does not cover under warranty.

Item No: PCX601212 SHAFTING GEAR 31/56T (PLASTIC) $64.99

Please call our order desk at 905 738 5115 press 2 to place orders.

Thank you,
Bowen
Customer Service Agent"

To say I'm disappointment is a bit of an understatement. How can a gear necessary for function not be under warranty? That's a convenient excuse to suck another 70 bucks (plus shipping) out of my wallet. I'll order a spool of nylon for my 3D printer before I give them any more of my cash.

Safe to say "Busy Bee" won't be getting any more of my business.....
 
70 bucks for a "standard" replacement gear is quite a lot of money. If it is a sacrificial gear, they should have added a spare one when selling the mill.

You can make this gear out of POM, that is a lot stronger than 3D printed. All you need is a way to index a gear blank. So repair the mill using a 3D printed gear and mill a (few) POM gears. If you don't have POM, HPL or UHMPE (kitchen chop board) would also be OK.

I use 3 3D printed gears in my bigger lathe. They last more than a year now. I have the POM gears already made but if these 3D printed gears fail, I will replace them again by 3D printed gears to avoid damage to other parts of the lathe.
 
They actually sent me a second email: revised price of 84.99 and 6-8 month waiting list.

Yeah, pretty sure I'm done with them....
 
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So I reinstalled the roached H/L gear so I can at lest use the mill in high.

Pulled the 3d gear out and the teeth are just fine. A little confused as to what went wrong, I started cleaning the grease off and it soon became evident what happened.

I remember when I made it I was experimenting a bit with settings. Apparently, I had the infill setting too low and that allowed the center to break loose loose and allowed the gear to wobble around.

So it would have worked fine if I had used a higher (or 100%) infill.

Normally I'd give it another try, but I've got a steel replacement on the way so no need to waste 3d filament on it....
 
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