After a bit of screwing around I managed to get the saddle modeled without having it fused to the base. I’m actually fairly pleased with the result. There are a bunch of threaded set screw holes that I haven’t modelled yet, but for what I’m looking to do, this is probably good enough.
One of the things that I’m thinking about is seeing if can modify the 1/4 thread with some other arrangement.
I thought it would be cool attempt to model a ball screw and nut. I did a bit of googling and I think what i need is the macro sweep. Here are :
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Macro_Solid_Sweep
Which took me to here and this is where I wound up. It looks like I’ll need to do a bit of freecad scripting.
I was trying to figure out what the ball screw thread form looks like. I ran into some interesting reading here:
I’d like to get that saddle model if I could.