Just a couple of points (not all of them):
The idea of a movable plate goes back to the earliest clock movements, although these were largely handmade affairs and once set up, the plates were pinned in place. Later ones were done to higher precision. The loads in a clock are entirely different than the loads on a winder, though.
My first winder, which didn't work at all, had the input and output shafts on the same axis. When I broke it down and remounted the components on a breadboard to analyze the problem, I had the in and out shafts about 6 inches apart. I did a lot of winding with it and the offset axes were no problem at all. The current ones are 4/10" (±10mm) apart and the users don't even notice it. That's also the reason for the intermediate plate, to support the stub ends of the crank and hook shafts. A few of these units had adjustable layshafts...this would be the equivalent of your adjustable axis bushings. But to answer Ray's concern, there is a spread between the two sprockets on the layshaft, so the shaft could be cocked off 90° and leave each chain with a correct amount of slack. The plane of the chains became slightly curved looking down from the top, but this didn't hurt anything, it only made them run quieter. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't work at all well with gears. I don't make them like that anymore, but use a takeup wheel instead. You can't do that with gears, either.
Bearings/bushings: I've used Tefzel (like teflon but tougher) and may or may not go back to it, brass, and nylon (my current choice). My uninformed (I'm a Chain Gang guy) opinion about ball bearings is that they would be necessary if you want to use gears and build an heirloom unit. Otherwise perhaps oilite bushings. But gears with plastic bushings? There's such a thing as going too cheap. There's an old proverb you can ask me about off-line.
Art.
Received on Tue Mar 15 2011 - 07:37:46 CET
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:46 CET