Re: Pigtail SO thrust bearings

From: <rbharlan_at_comcast.net>
Date: 26 Dec 2014 08:55:38 -0800

I'm not sure when the first use of "pigtail" occurred, but Jim Richmond shows a bent a wire bearing in INAV, Oct. '70 and calls the rear a pigtail. The bearing that I made, starting in '74, comes from an Italian modeler, Egizio Corazza, who showed it in INAV, Dec. '69. All I did was to improve the coverage of the sheet metal around the prop shaft by using a very thin, angled slit so that, when the metal is bent forward and back, the hole looks closed when viewed from the rear. I adopted the term "pigtail" because it did the same thing that a bent wire does, support the wire all the way around.
 

 The tooling that I needed was a bending jig to get the side profile of the bearing and something to bend the slit end forward and back to allow the shaft hook to drop into the rear hole. This gadget is a pair of pliers that bends each side. I also needed a fixture to hold the bearing blank at the correct angle for slotting.

Received on Fri Dec 26 2014 - 08:55:38 CET