How to turn a drill bit into a cost effective lead screw:

As you can see from the Instagram video below, Ed recently rebuilt our iPad Time Machine widget (see link at the bottom of the page) using a ClearPath servo! To make it more stable, a lead screw was definitely the way to go but they can be pretty expensive and in general aren’t too fast. Ed found a project on Morgan 3D Printer’s website, detailing an experiment they did with a concrete drill bit. With a relatively cheap bit and a 3D printed nut, we were able to build a lightening-fast rig that moved the iPad up and down way faster than the previous belt-driven version! (So fast, in fact, that the iPad needs a new mounting system so it doesn’t fall off)

Materials:

Downloads:

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