Re: How is the belleville washer solution working?
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Gotcha, Anthony.
When I took apart another owners SLW, I was surprised at how hard it was to turn the inner transfer gear the is attached to it's Oldham coupler (with the gearbox loose so the motor and gearbox were not engaged).? It was really hard to turn the worm...I concluded the spring was very strong.? There was no Belleville in that system, stock from Losmandy (a recent retrofit).
I could get the worm "loose" (so it rotates like the original direct drive worm does) by turning inward the set bolt to the left of the spring bolt, as that backs off the spring mechanism. But the point of the spring is to not be backed off!??
So... I wonder if a lighter spring type would really work better in the new SLW design.? I don't own one so can't experiment with that idea.??
I wish you great success and luck on your experiments, and will enjoy reading your posts about it.
Very best, Michael
On Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:40 AM Anthony Q < anthony@...> wrote: Michael-
Most of what you are saying jives with my thinking, and in fact the loading of the fixed outer race makes more sense to me than the original orientation, because of the potential for friction on the turning inner race.
If I am understanding your post correctly, I think you are wrong about the SLW bearing preload, however. I was able to make that too tight, in that, although the bearings felt smooth, they felt as if they had too much lateral preload. (No belleville washer.) This is with worm block unmounted, so no other factors affecting the worm spinning freely. I think there is sufficient side to side adjustment, at least in my relatively new, (last November), G11 with SLW.
To be clear, my concern over (microscopic) bearing damage is to an unsprung bearing. (With no belleville washer.) I think for most people using this mount to shoot at lower FLs, the impact of that damage may be irrelevant, but if we are trying to reduce the last few arc-seconds of PE, this could become more consequential. I think I mentioned earlier also that if the lateral load is tight-ish at room temp, and the mount is run in cooler temps, this could increase the axial load on the bearings enough that any imperfections in the bearings or minor misalignment of the blocks could create a situation where the motor could slightly "brinnell" the bearing races.
I am excited to try the belleville washer to see if I can get that 3.15/79 second error down finally.
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Michael Herman