Thursday, June 13, 2013

Mill: Bench Top Precision Belt Kit

I decided to preemptively upgrade my mill to belt drive. This way I never have to deal with broken gears, and the mill runs quieter as well. Since I frequently work later at night that's a nice benefit. After researching kits for a while, I found the one made by Bench Top Precision:
http://www.benchtopprecision.com/x2_belt_drive_kit.html

It looked identical to the Little Machine Shop kit, but was significantly cheaper (prices have gone up since I bought it) so I went with it. The seller was great to work with, and the money I saved allowed me to buy additional tooling. After receiving it I see there are a couple notable difference between it and the one from LMS:
  • The LMS kit pulleys use the  the stock shaft keys while the BTP kit uses dual set screws, one of which seats in the key way of the shaft.
  • The LMS kit has you re-tighten the spindle nut's set screw. On the BTP kit it's inaccessible so instead you use Loctite on the threads.
  • The LMS motor pulley is seated down all the way on the motor's shaft, while on the BTP kit the motor pulley is visually aligned with the spindle pulley and then tightened. 

Installation was easy, and took less than 30 minutes. Please note you want to install the motor standoffs on the base plate before installing the base plate on the mill. One annoying note is the kit was a mix of metric and Imperial allen bolts, especially since the mill is all metric.


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