http://store.terawattindustries.com/36- … s-nut.html

It's a bit expensive, but it looks like it would be exactly what I need, although a bit too long.

At least least you would be guaranteed to find the rod for cheap.

Don't tempt me, I have vacation time I need to burn

At least least you would be guaranteed to find the rod for cheap.

I'm in Australia and got mine from a specialist bolt shop called Boltmaster. The big generic hardware chain Bunnings definitely has thread rod as well though.

I'm in the US, so Australia doesn't help me too much. Not that I wouldn't mind visiting, but the airfare would make for some seriously expensive parts.

McMaster has pretty much everything you could ever want granted it is not cheap but what is these days...

Thanks, I'm not sure how I missed that before.

I was thinking that I wanted to buy an actual flange nut instead of regular nuts because it would be less work to use something pre-made. But, after seeing the price of flange nuts, I took a closer look at my SD2 and discovered that they made their own nuts too. It looks like they used a regular nut sandwiched between two pieces of wood. That's probably good enough for my project, so I'll give it a try and see what happens. How hard could it be?

metric rod down to M2
http://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-threaded-rods/=mpygyr

metric nuts down to M1:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#metric-hex-nuts/=mpyixu

Well then if you are in the US of A.. use that other bastion of all things machine related.. McMaster Carr!

Or theres good old Harbor Freight (although their products smell a little too imported sometimes though if you know what I mean....)

McMaster is actually the first thing I thought of, but it's all very expensive and they don't seem to have much in the way of metric nuts. The smallest I see is M12, and that's $25 per nut! Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong spot.

I didn't have any better luck on Grainger. I forgot to try Harbor Freight. Thanks.

Your local hardware store?

There has been a lot of discussion lately about threaded rods. I recently purchased 1m each of M4 and M5 threaded rod with 8 nuts for $5.

That sounds great. Where did you find it? I've tried Home Depot and, like mconsidine, found absolutely nothing. When I asked an employee about it, all I got was a blank stare. Although that could be from having used the word 'metric'...that word tends to scare people.

If only their freight to Australia was more reasonable I'd be shopping there everyday

Or theres good old Harbor Freight (although their products smell a little too imported sometimes though if you know what I mean....)

So I too need to find a decent source and am guessing it will be online ...
Matt

There has been a lot of discussion lately about threaded rods. I recently purchased 1m each of M4 and M5 threaded rod with 8 nuts for $5.

I'm working on a project that uses stepper motors with leadscrews, similar to the Z-axis setup of the SD2, but I'm having trouble finding the parts. I see that the SoliDoodle store sells spare Z-axis rods, but I don't see where to get the flange nuts for it. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks