time for new racks

[Boltz]

It's time to put some new racks on the old MG. As you can see from the photos, they are 180 degree integrated racks with 60MM hole spacing. Well, OK, maybe you can't see that right away, but I did the in to mm conversion, and the mounting holes are on 60MM centers.

I'd like to go helical, but the smallest module 2 pinion available from Atlanta Drives is about 32% larger than what I have right now, and I'm worried that will cost me a lot of acceleration, plus the loss of encoder resolution. I could go from 10:1 gearboxes to 16:1, but then the backlash goes up a good bit.

I could also go with a straight tooth rack with 5MM circular pitch, but the only stock pinion AD has available is an unhardened one with a face width of only 12MM, thus I'd be using less than half of the rack's 25MM width to drive the load. I can't imagine this would have a very long lifespan.

Looking for ideas...

-Jim Hart