I had the bushing and shaft on my X axis pinion gear assembly go bad this week and ordered a new one (and a couple spares), and was pleasantly surprised to get a redesigned version of this assembly where they got rid of the sintered bushing and just have a single (but wider than the previous) bearing, and a replaceable pinion gear. Since its new, I had to buy the whole assembly, but in the future we’ll be able to just buy the pinion itself instead of the whole assembly. Don’t know how much the pinion alone will cost since its not up on the AVID site yet, but glad they made the design update.
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what brought you to the conclusion that your pinion gear was bad? visual inspection? did you notice any increase in accuracy with the new gearing? have always had trouble on a 4X8 with accuracy on Y axis over 48 inches, as much as 1/16 at the far end of the 96 run…
A persistent squeaking when laser rastering. Usually the gear wears out (which I check visually), but this gear wasn’t all that old and still looked fine. The bushing was really dry and wore into the shaft. Never had that happen before.
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I constantly spray all the gears and slides with Q20(WD40), especially the moving parts on the Gantry. That is in addition the silicon grease in the sliders. That seems to help with the sqeeking.
Does anyone know if the PRO CNC Machine Spare Parts Bundle for Nema 34 is shipping with this new style pinion gear yet?
Isn’t the application of Q20 and silicon grease like running a humidifier and dehumidifier in the same room? Or is soap followed by moisturizer a better analogy?
The Q20 is to remove all the dust before clogging the sliders.
The switch to a single bearing and a replaceable pinion sounds like a solid improvement. Really curious to see how the pricing turns out for the pinions. It’s great to hear about machining changes that make maintenance easier.
Contact support and ask, but I think the transition is in it’s late stages.