Way Covers

[jcdammeyer]

I wonder how well a car cabin filter would work or even some other air filter pulled apart?

Probably not well. For example today after all the work I was vacuuming the chips off the accordion guard between the table and the vertical Z. Over the years the fabric like material is pulling off the wire frame and being sucked into the vacuum. I have to hold each fold apart to get the bits out. Likely because it really was too long to start with?

 

[jcdammeyer]

I like this approach.

 

[djberta]

I like this approach.

I think that’s the sexiest alternative. Looks like armour. Can’t get tougher. I wonder if aluminum would work?

 

[jcdammeyer]

I think that’s the sexiest alternative. Looks like armour. Can’t get tougher. I wonder if aluminum would work?

I'm not sure. He taps into the stainless steel, which being fairly hard holds the thread form. I'm not sure thin aluminum would work for that.

 

[Upnorth]

My mill has accordion style way covers. They work.

 

[Mike R]

I like this approach.

Similar to what I posted, but done with much more care and craftmanship!
Also, for mine I choose to use a mechanism to control the spacing / location of the plates, but I only needed 3 plates and was able to make them fairly big as I let it angle up the column.
This also let me maximize the travel to the column, the plates don't need to fit horizontally in the gap. The pic below shows what was hiding under the covers keeping them spaced. The biggest issue I had with the arrangement was that with a big vice hanging off the back of the table it wanted to poke into the cover at maximum travel, but that can happen with an accordion cover on Z too (happens on my Tormach).
The main issue with the nesting style in the video is the space it takes up, if you want it to be very narrow to accommodate full travel to the column, then its going to be a lot of pieces stacked up to expand to cover the Y travel the other way. The lathe is convenient as the chuck/spindle creates an overhang that can be used to your advantage. On the mill not so much.