FOUND THE "BANG", what now?

[harryball]

PRT 2006 Alpha. Rarely, while running I would hear a BANG but it would keep going and everything looked fine. I finally figured out it occured during a direction change. Then I figured out the pinion was riding up the rack tooth enough to drop back in and BANG. Since it was a direction change no actual cutting was happening so no noticable impact on the cut.

Time to replace that pinion for sure, but it is not that old. I'm going to replace it and see how it goes.

Anyone dealt with this before... is it... (gasp) the rack?

/RB

[kevin]

lost com

computer problem

whe i first heard it i thought it was mechincal

try a more prowerfull computer do speed test compare

[harryball]

I mean I FOUND the bang. It was driving me nuts because I couldn't find a problem anywhere. I finally saw it happen and one side of the carriage had a quick shutter during a direction change.

Later, in a fluke while greasing the track with the bot running I saw it happen and the motor actually dropped down and when it snapped back there was the bang/clunk/pop whatever you want to call it. It didn't skip a tooth, it just rode up on it a little.

I looked over the pinion and you can't tell anything (yeah, I know you can't anyway). The rack appears fine too. I tensioned the spring a little more and it's been running fine. I'm going to clean all the grease off and install new pinions as soon as this next batch of houses runs.

I'm hoping that does it and the rack is not wearing instead.

/RB

[Brady Watson]

Seems strange that would happen without there being swarf jammed in the teeth of the rack or pinion. I have seen this many times - the rack has to be raked out of swarf.

Your PRT turnbuckles should be 3.5 turns from no tension on the spring.

Rack and pinions are dirt cheap. Check your PM.

-B