Saturday, June 9, 2012

UABMM2 Bent Shaft

The piece of shaft that I used here was from a piece of stock that I had bought at a local hardware store.  I cut six inches off the piece of stock, and used it directly.  Since then I have noticed that it has some irregularities.  One end of the shaft was mushroomed a bit, and I assumed that it was dropped on the end.  The gear would not fit over that end, while the other, sawed end, fit right.  Well I started looking at the shaft carefully, and noticed that the impact on the end of the shaft was a side hit.  There is an indentation which is on a corner, like the rod stock hit the floor, or whatever, at an angle.  So I chucked up the shaft in a drill press to grind down the mushroomed end, and found out that the shaft is also bent.  Look at it, can you tell its bent?
So, today I'll be making a new shaft for the UABMM2.  I assume that the bend was made at the same time as the end of the shaft took the hit.  It sounds like terrible inventory management to be throwing around the steel stock, but, you know, it is just a chunk of steel.  I'll take it as a axiom that I will not assume that a piece of metal is straight, until I verify that its is straight.  A rotating assembly needs to be perfectly straight...

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