I will do a drawing of what I am thinking about, but in the mean time I will try to verbally desribe it.
Image you the worm wheel is split in half. The split is vertical, so esentally you have two thin wheels when they are taken apart. when the wheels are put together they form a working worm wheel. There is a spring inserted in the assembled wheel that forces the two halves to be rotated a few degrees out of sync from each other.
When the whole assembly is put together, it will put a load on both sides of the screw. This will illiminate any backlash. I guess the comprimise is that the pressure put on the screw would be increased a lot. The other thing is if you have and exsessive load to drive the spring load must be greater than the load the assembly is driving.
One advantage is when either the wheel or screw wears down, the slack is taken up by the springs.
I dont know if this description is clear. I know it will be hard to draw, but I will give it a go. |