The Part 1 keeps crashing my computer somehow, each time I try to "quote" to reply or to delete my accidental double post.
Therefore, I move on to this new thread.
This started at: http://visforvoltage.org/forum/7543-foreign-body-vectrix-motor
Without the motor cover tightened, radially locating the outboard bearing, the rotor will "walk" around due to uneven magnetic forces around it. I don't think you have a bent shaft, judging from the videos.
Thanks for that explanation! That makes sense to me. Maybe the shaft is straight and the whining and vibration is exclusively due to the oval shape of the ring-gear.
I guess the only way to be sure wold be to take off the Sun-gear (or somehow measure the possible wobble of the Sun-gear).
But, no matter what the result would be, there would be no way of fixing it (other than replacing the motor or entire swingarm). So I shall leave that alone for now!
Can the rotor be pulled out by hand after removal of the sun gear?
Where are the green blobs usually located? Is there a typical position in the motor and they just use different sizes? That's how I would try to design it if balancing is likely going to be needed: Build it so that there is always a moderate imbalance in the same direction; the small differences can then be smoothed over by attaching a balancing weight to the same spot in the motor all the time. Just the size of the blob would need to differ, not the location.
By estimating the weight of the dust and weighing the fragments I could get a good approximation of the original weight of this balancing resin blob. I just need to figure out where to stick it!
Mik,
As my english is not good enough to understand this post, and for me it's not easy to describe in your language the "warped" shaft of my vectrix, I'm posting an rought image to describe how the VUK staff detected my problem. The axis of the engine was not parallel to the ground, one planetary was always tight, the other two always had a nice gap with the shaft's central gear. no matter how many gerabox replacements they did, the motor remained emm... "warped" is really correct to describe this? ;-)
Hope it can throw some light.
On the other hand, the firefox crash you are experiencing might be caused by protection measures of photobucked's server against ciberatacks. Try to use a picture server with different security settings, like picasa (google). I'm sure this one won't crash the firefox...
Thank you, R, I see what you mean.
The Vectux swingarm might have a bit of that problem; maybe "misaligned motorshaft" woud be the right term?
But in addition, the ring gear is not perfectly round and the planetary gears are slightly different from each other. That allowed me to improve the overall noise by rotating them to different positions. The smallest planetary gear into the position that gets squeezed by the misaligned motor shaft.
Did your gearbox make an uneven noise or just a loud but even whine?
A "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" as opposed to a "Wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee" ?
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
The offset you are showing in your drawing is exactly what was wrong with my Vectrix when viewed from the end. However, in my machine, it was not due to any angular problem with the motor shaft but from the spider that holds the planet gears being machined off center. This caused one of the planet gears to be tight on the sun gear and the other two to be tight on the ring gear. Machining a new spider solved the problem. I suspect this problem is in many other Vectrix scooters. As to the resin issue, this must be the source of much of the dust finding it's way to the encoder--but to make dust bits of the resin it must be breaking up and getting caught between the rotor and the stator during operation. I can't believe that chunks of resin were left in the motors during manufacture. Lets hope the stuff isn't getting hot and melting off during operation lest we get an "magnetic brake" in the rear wheel at high speed. I would hope Mik can get the rotor out and make sure the resin isn't coming from the gaps between the magnets in the rotor.
A word of caution to anyone who takes their motor/rotor apart...make sure you have a non magnetic place to put the rotor when you take it out. And, while you are taking it out, or putting it in make sure you do not have your fingers between the rotor and stator at anytime during assemble/disassembly. That rotor will suck into the stator in a blink, removing anything in its path!
I don't think I'll do that in a hurry!
I believe that the green blob is in fact a balancing weight that has come loose. The resin materiel in the rotor seems to be made of a more pale-green material.
Although this may not be obvious to a casual reader of my posts, I have only done the various repair jobs in response to existing problems which I thought needed fixing. (Gearbox, battery, BMS, motor controller, hazard lights, encoder sensor dust from dust seal, and finally the rattling sound from the blob in the motor)
Well, the RETAMPI and the CANbus decoding (very rudimentary) were not strictly speaking repairs, but very helpful for understanding what is going on in the scooter.
I would really not mind it if it just kept running well for a few years now! I have projects coming out of my ears (which keep getting delayed because of the "Vectux")!
.
One important question: Do I need to worry about the lack of a balancing weight in the motor?
Do they only put one in when it's really really needed or does every VX-1 rotor have one?
What will break or wear out quicker because the motor is not balanced?
Is it a safety issue?
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
Hahahahaha! thanks for the explanation, the second line is really easier to understand. The noise was CRAZY, LOUD AND WHINE, a WEWEWEWEWEWEWE, as you describe it...
As far as I can tell, the dust from around the rotor did not make it into the encoder housing. The dust around the rotor is green, like the resin blob from which it was abraded; the dust in the encoder housing is black, like the foam seal between it and the outside world. The dust on the outside is red, like most of the dust in Australia.
Small fragments of the resin blob would have gotten between rotor and stator, but most of the impacts would have occurred between the four spokes of the rotor and the blob.
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
Did this involve both parts of the "spider"?
I mean the part that is bolted onto the motor housing inside the gear box and the part that actually holds the planetary gears against that first part. Do they both need to be replaced to fix this problem, or just the top part?
Would it be possible to machine another spider for me? If it fixes the problem in the Vectux, it would probably work in many or most of the noisy VX-1 gearboxes around!
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!