I did exactly the same thing a few years back, Roger. A buddy of mine who
was a machinist in a plastics shop, acquired some Delrin plate scraps for me
to use. I roughly formed the pieces into a couple of 5"X5" squares and then
drilled a small pilot hole through both pieces. Dropping the drill bit down
through both pieces to use as an indexing pin I rough cut both pieces as a
unit into a fat donut and then finished the shaping with a band sander. I
finished by withdrawing the drill bit and cutting the appropriate sized mast
holes in both. Viola! A solid state thrust bearing.
73,
Jon Pearl - W4ABC
www.w4abc.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "K8RI on TT" <k8ri-on-towertalk@tm.net>
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 1:07 AM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Thrust bearings
> On 10/10/2011 12:21 AM, Jim Lux wrote:
>> On 10/9/11 7:55 PM, Charlie Gallo wrote:
>>> Hey Gang,
>>> Reading the Nth thread on lubing thrust bearings, and just had a
>>> thought - would it be a good idea to design a thrust bearing that works
>>> based upon an 'ultra high molecularly weight filled self lubricating
>>> plastic" (aka something like a filled teflon - or rulon or even
>>> vespel) - nothing to ever rust/lubricate, and they can take decades of
>>> low to medium speed rotation/sliding - heck, in theory, if your mast was
>>> truly round, you could just have 3 or 4 pressure blocks, and it just
>>> rides on that
>
> We used to use graphite impregnated Delrin for low speed bearings. How
> much of a load they'd take I don't know, but they worked well and lasted
> long in our applications.
>
> 73
>
> Roger (K8RI)
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