I recently replaced the cam-chain on my motorcycle. I am not sure I needed to, the new one I bought wasn't very much shorter than the old one. Examining the drive, it appears to be zero-backlash and to work with normal involute-toothed gears. In fact, it seems like an ideal drive for a CNC axis. It should be stiffer than a toothed belt, much stronger and (according to http://www.promsnab.info/catalogues/bosch/tooth%20chains/inverted%20tooth%20chains.pdf quieter too). They are also known as "silent chains" so there might be some truth in this.
The requirements of a camtrain drive are very similar to those of a CNC axis, and it is interesting to note that the other main-player in camtrain drives is the toothed belt. An inverted tooth chain can run in oil. There are belt-in-oil camtrain drives on some engines, but I think that they are specially formulated. The cam-chain I removed had done 100,000 miles, most of it at 5000 rpm or more. (and up to 14,000 rpm) -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
