So this shaft for some reason does not come out straight and as such, tightening the collar causes slop and since it’s spaced very tightly, the gears will grind against either metal or the motor casing.
Can anyone find the issue? we replaced the spacers, washers, gears, bearing, shaft, and shaft collars but it’s still slanted and creating major slop. could it possibly be that the metal channel is deformed?
ninja edit: the shaft collar on the right is perfectly flat on the channel, yet the thing is slanted
Why make things so hard on yourselves? This is the gold-standard for attaching a motor to a chassis. Unless you are an advanced builder, just do it this way:
The problem is the cantilevered design. You need support for the outer end of the axle, which would necessitate a redesign.
In situations where you must go with a cantilevered shaft, then you need at least two bearings surfaces on the supported end of the axle, and they need to be separated by an inch or more. Place the second bearing on a c-channel at least an inch or so inboard of the existing chassis C-channel. And of course, attach the inboard C-channel to the chassis with standoffs or other structural members.
A single bearing surface has very minimal contact area with an axle, so any tendency to to twist or cant across the structure can’t be effectively countered. That’s what you’re seeing. A second bearing farther inboard will make the axle much straighter, though you will still have bending at the end.
Both those effects (canting and bending) will be lessened by using the larger high strength axles. But you still need multiple bearing surfaces separated by some distance.
No, it’s not perfectly flat on the channel. In the picture, the face of the shaft collar is normal (perpendicular) to the axle shaft, and there is an obvious slant to its alignment with the C-channel.
The rule is still: two rails, firmly attached to one another, with the motor output shaft supported by two bearings, and the load between two rails (Rail can equal C-Channel or Angle). If you are lifting something, take a look at my picture, and put the lifting mechanism where the wheel is, or use gear(s) or chain to connect the motor shaft to the load.
The design actually isn’t cantilevered. We took off the other channel for easier access to the inside but it’s definitely not supposed to be cantilevered. Should I add the other channel before trying to screw in the shaft collar?
I’ll see if there are areas where I can place more bearings.
The shaft will be supported by two rails, the other rail was taken off for easier building. The issue with our design is that if we put the other gear and c channel where the wheel is in your pic, it will interfere with our chained motor that runs through that area.
We’ve had this design work before just fine, all we did was replace some 1 bars in the front joint of the four bar with c channels but now we cant get this c channel that worked before, back in. The other side of the mogo lift is secured and just fine
When I look at your picture, I see that the two c-channels are not lined up. You can see that by the relative locations of the holes in the two channels, this is causing the axle to not be perpendicular to either channel. The other indication that there is a misalignment issue is the large gear is not perpendicular to the spur gear.
yeah, in the pic the c channel is not lined up and the gear isnt perpendicular either as the picture was taken after screwing the right shaft collar on and pushing it, along with its accompanying washer, up against the channel. Whenever I push the c channel and the gear flat against the bearing however, I can’t get the shaft collar to line up flat against the channel.
Either your axle is bent or a c-channel is bent or you have some serious misalignment issues. I still thing the issue is with the two c-channels not being lined up.
hmm, okay i’ll check tomorrow. We switched the axles so it’s definitely not bent. I think it’s possible the c channel or rail is bent somewhere. I’ll also check if they’re aligned correctly because the other side is completely fine.
