Was looking though old posts and seen a guy had a sock over his router
Did not want to revive a post from 4 years ago so started this one just to ask a quick question
I have the Z-Plus and was wondering if anyone could foresee any issues with putting a sock over the Z-axis stepper motor to stop sawdust from getting in there?
Do you mean the open hole to the motor bearing?
If so, a piece of tape should suffice to keep the dust out.
Yes i mean the hole on the top
Being in south Louisiana Iām thinking sealing the hole with tape could introduce moisture from the humidity
Other than the funny look, there is probably no side effect to putting a sock on the Z stepper, but Iām not sure itās useful, I have yet to hear about a stepper motor failing due to dust. If you have dust collection in place there should be minimal amounts of dust that makes it way up to the top of the Z stepper anyway ?
@RichCournoyer has the informal copyright on the āsock on routerā trick, who knows maybe youāll launch a āsock on stepperā trend 
RichCournoyer used a white sock, iāll be using a black sock so his copyright is invalid
I 3D printed cute little snap on caps for all of my Stepper motorsā¦years ago. Why is the hole there? Because the mfg also sells a model with a double ended shaftā¦since weāre not using it (the hole) there is NO reason to leave it open. Only bad things can happen. As I sayā¦Cap it Mate!
There are some folks who hold that the hole in the motor housing is also useful for ventilation/cooling ā and there may be some small metal fragments which will work their way out and need to be removed, so please donāt do anything permanent.
Well, this model stepper motor is NOT convection cooled, rather via conduction. So (FYI) them folks are wrong.
According to most of the vendors the motor should not have air convection through it (as Rich points out), both front and rear bearings are meant to provide a basic seal.
As Julien says though, internal temperature is the major determinant for the working lifetime of the motor windings so whilst plugging up the small hole should make no difference covering the entire motor in something which reduces convective or radiative heat loss to the air is likely not a good idea. There will be some small conduction to the mounting surface but unless mounted with a thermal paste this isnāt going to heatsink the stepper very effectively.
How did we go from a sock over the router to using one over the stepper motors? Am I missing something?
The first post where Wayne mentioned he was considering putting a sock on his Z stepper motor 
Ahhhh, I saw the first line and, to be honest, didnāt read further because I saw the post with the router he mentioned.
Hey, I am up there in years. Thats my excuse and am sticking with that.
Iām gonna use tin foil I think
Easiest solution all around
GoreTexĀ© to the rescue, it would let the moisture out of the motor when it gets warm and not let it back in
Remember, its all about that damn hole! 
Hereās my solution, and it still looks great!
More seriously though, the motor will tend to do this on itās own. The motor has two holes, one of which the spindle comes out through. As moisture gets into the stepper there is a constant process to manage this, assuming you turn the machine on reasonably frequently.
The air outside the motor will have some specific humidity (g water per kg air) which will translate into a relative humidity. Thanks to the way the vapour pressure of water varies with temperature, for any mass of air with a constant mass of water vapour in it (Humidity Ratio), if you raise the (dry bulb) temperature of the air, the relative humidity (RH) will reduce. If you cool the air down then the RH increases, at some temperature you hit the dew point and moisture condenses out of the air (thus dew and fog and possibly wet stepper internals). When you heat the air up the mass of water which can be carried as vapour also increases.
The motor is not airtight, itās not designed to be. This means that it will exchange air (and water vapour) with the surrounding environment. When you power up the machine, as the motor heats up, some fraction of any condensed moisture inside the motor will evaporate into the air inside the motor. This causes expansion of that internal air (much more expansion than happens with just temperature rise of dry air), which pumps some of that now wetter air out of the motor, carrying moisture out (just like the vapour permeable membrane in GoreTex type fabrics).
So, unless your motors are hermetically sealed and able to be pressurised, youāre going to be constantly exchanging small amounts of air with the environment, thereās a tendency for the air leaving to carry any condensate out of the motor as vapour. This is why small electrical heaters in electrical cabinets and similar environments work so well to keep them dryer inside than outside.
HTH
I use one of those electrical cabinet heaters in my gun safe, works very well indeed to keep a steady temperature and low moisture level.
I donāt know if it was me or not but I put a sock over my Makita on my CNC. Based on the amount of dust I vacuum off the sock everyday, I think it was a smart move. Iāve had it on for 2.5 yrs now and never had any issues.
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