I'm making a thing!
I have a client's vintage (1980s) Japanese mount here. I'm upgrading to high speed Go-To control. The original worm gears were mounted in brass bearing blocks, which works great for a low speed mount that only spins when tracking. They're eat themselves as soon as we start spinning the worm gears at high speed for slewing. so, we needed a solution. I didn't want to modify the original factory parts, so I started designed replacement parts that would allow the worm to ride on bearings. This is me learning how to make stuff on a lathe...
Original setup:
I decided to copy the 4 (each different...) bearing blocks in aluminum, and set in a small ball bearing in each. Here's the first one:
And...it fits! That piece only took me 3 or 4 tries and probably 15 hours of work at the lathe! So efficient!!
(Actually, it also took me 5 months, since I originally tasked one of our machinist interns to make these for me on the CNC lathe at work, which would have taken 3 hours, been perfect, and could have been made out of stainless...but she never got around to it).
