Hardware Questions

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

1) Hex shafts which are turned down to fit into circular bearings on their ends. AndyMark sells a couple of these for use in their gearboxes, but they're made of steel and they're too short - does anyone know if any supplier sells these in either 6061 or 7075, or would we need to just buy a hex shaft and lathe it ourselves?

For our 2012 robot (and I want to say 2009, but it's been a minute since I saw it), we took hex shaft from McMaster-Carr and had our machine shop turn down the last little bit on each end (plus some E-clip grooves, but that's not relevant to your task). Since the bronze bushings we used were 1/2" and the shaft is 1/2" across the flats, all they had to do was round off the hex. Easy and fairly quick on any respectable lathe, so much so that I wouldn't try any quick-and-dirty techniques except in truly dire circumstances.