MadModder

It took a long time and a lot of tries to sort out, but I finally was able to etch a brass thread table for the ELS.

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It was then painted to fill in the hollows.

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And mounted on the body of the change box housing I had made, which was in turn mounted on the lathe. Very happy with the result! 

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Ah, the Sock'n a Sock and a Shoe'n a Shoe bit, I think about it every time I put on a Sock'n a Shoe and a Sock'n a Shoe.

Bill, that's the stuff.  But I had a reason that I didn't need to model the bed - explained below.

Is there a Meathead of the Month award?  If there is, then I'm nominating myself!

I was down in the shop taking enough measurements to allow me to model the bed.  I found that I've got 5.28mm between the bottom of the bed and the top of the frame.  OK, now how far does the head of the mounting bolt protrude above the bottom of the bed?  I measured the top of the bolt at 11.62mm down from the top of the bed.  A little head-scratching later and I determined that a 5mm deep notch would give me almost 2mm of clearance.  Hokay-fine, now how wide does the notch need to be?  Better make sure the bed is centered first.  Why is there such a LARGE gap on the far side of the bed, how wide is the bed anyway?  Survey says: Bed width - 300mm, space between frame rails - 400mm.  (Insert head smacking Homer Simpson DOH moment here.)  Wade-a-minut-here, why is there only about 10mm of the bed sitting on the mounting bracket?  (Insert another Homer Simpson moment here!)  Some dip-stick forgot that the horizontal leg of the bracket needed to point to the center, not the outside, of the machine. 

I still need to trim a few mm off the vertical leg of the bracket.  But, I can actually gain a couple mm of usable Z height out of this - instead of losing height as I originally feared.

I didn't model the bed because it CAN'T interfere with anything.  Despite my original panic, this turned out to be tempest in a tea pot, a much ado about nothing, a Rosanna Rosannadanna "Nevermind" moment.

You could try deleting the partition through diskpart and then re-creating and formatting if you don't care about the data.

To delete a protected or hidden partition using DiskPart, use the delete partition override command.  This forces DiskPart to bypass protection that prevents standard deletion, such as for OEM, recovery, or system-protected partitions.

Steps to Delete a Partition with Override:

1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator.
2. Type diskpart and press Enter.
3. Run list disk to identify the correct disk.
4. Select the disk: select disk X (replace X with the disk number).
5. List partitions: list partition.
6. Select the target partition: select partition Y (replace Y with the partition number).
7. Execute the override: delete partition override.
8. Type exit to close DiskPart.

Warning: This command permanently deletes data. Ensure you?ve backed up any important files. You cannot delete the system, boot, or active paging file partitions using this method.

I got the brackets cut to length and the inside corner radius removed. I found out that my method for bolting the frame to the base may NOT have been such a great idea. Not modeling the bed initially was not a wise move, it gave me the false notion that I had plenty of room to play with. I forgot that the bed overhangs the main frame. Those mounting bolts mean I either need to raise the bed 6-8mm to clear them, or I need to swap those bolts with something else, neither of which I planned on doing. Raising the bed would probably be the simplest, but that means my 65mm clearance over the bed drops down to more like 55mm - at least for now anyway.

Or.... Maybe I just notch the ends of the bed extrusion, that might be the simplest/easiest thing to do. I'll have to check that out, we're probably talking about removing a 10x10mm notch from the bottom of both ends of the bed extrusion. I'm not sure, but I think that extrusion is at least 15mm thick, might be 20mm or more. And how often do you need to put a tee-nut in the last 10mm of the slot? I REALLY need to get the bed modelled, so I can see it before I do any slicing and dicing.