DIY pinion replacement

1

Hello all. Ever the skinflint, I’m looking for a way to save money when replacing the pinions on my old Avid machine. I’m in the UK, so postage and so on adds up. After countless hours, I think I’ve narrowed down an off-the-shelf pinion from a UK supplier which will fit the bill, if I modify the aluminium pulley a bit, rebore the pinion, cut a keyway. I’m a tinkerer, and money is tight.

My question, though, is what precision I’m looking for with this replacement pinon, in terms of DIN specs? I’m finding a few conflicting suggestions, and I’m bearing in mind that although this is a lovely machine it’s not a super-precise kind of deal, and I’m only cutting wood in general.

For reference, the pinion in question is the YG20-20 from HPC Gears in the UK, their PDF sheet is here: https://www.hpcgears.com/pdf_c33/23.108-23.113.pdf

ps, I know officially the old style pinion and pulley arrangement doesn’t come apart, but, well, mine did.

edit: I’ve had a reply from the suppliers, their gears are DIN 8 (approx AGMA 9)

2

An update to this post for anyone interested: I’m probably going to bite the bullet and ship in the official Avid drive gear sets.

It seems like the system I worked out would be functional, but it would cost £75 or so just for the three third-party pinions, and then I would still need to adjust them and add keyways and all that sort of stuff. And then, when I need to replace those pinions? Same job all over again.

I’ve requested an up-to-date quote for delivery to the UK. It is sure to be much less than the cost of the hours I’ve spent trying to hack together my own solution. So it goes.