Having just recently upgrading to the Ex Controller and experiencing a crash on my X axis I thought it was time to take a look at my XY pinions for any wear issues. My machine is 4 years old and I haven’t even looked at them since they are really hard to see without disassembly. What I found was some wear and a lot of gunk build up on all three pinions. The gunk looked like it was dried grease from the linear rail bearing blocks that had made its way down to the rack and then accumulated on the pinions. I probably could have cleaned them up with alcohol and got a few more years out of them but I decided to upgrade to the new Drive Gear Set.
The pinions on the new Gear Set look similar to the old ones but are ground more precisely and would appear to provide a better fit on the rack reducing backlash and maybe providing more consistency to improve accuracy. Also the pinion is removeable so you are not forced to change out the large gear that runs the timing belt when the pinion needs replacing in the future. The change out to the three new Gear Sets only took a little over an hour and has significantly improved performance. Backlash has been reduced to zero, well a lot less than .001", and I did see some accuracy improvement. I think the new Pro Gear Set is a great value for the price and encourage anyone who has not checked their pinions to do so and consider the upgrade.
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I too have changed to the EX controller and servos but havent heard about the near gears. So you say its worth the upgrade? You really can tell the difference? I dont mind spending the money to update them as mine are the original to my machine from 2021.
Check your pinions for wear. If they look OK and you are not noticing any issues then just wait until you need to change them. Whenever its time to change them out I would definitely get the new ones. Performance improvements are subtle but they are there.