There have been lots of comments on FaceBook about the azimuth drive disengaging from the drive belt because the base and dome are not perfectly round and concentric. There are two issues here. First it's very hard to get pieces of ABS plastic 8 ft. in diameter to stay truly circular within less than 1/4" given changes in temperature, etc. Second, the track that the dome wheels run in is wide enough to cause some shifting. First, try to get things as round as possible, but this is my ultimate solution to the drive cog coming off the dome's cogged drive. The white steel bracket used to be one piece. I sawed it in half and added the hinge. The unit slides on the bolt that goes into the wheel and is held against the dome cog by the spring. This solves the problem of the cog slipping when the dome moves away from the drive cog by allowing the drive cog to also move a bit.
@Jason Newton looking good with your mod of this! I think for me the hardest part was finding the right spring. Fortunately one of the local hardware stores has a wall of springs of different lengths and gauges. So far the one I am using is working out well.
Here was my take on this, I have a bay to the left so I used the right side as the spring lever. I used 3/16ths thick steel bar, 1.5" and 1.75" wide(wouldn't make a difference, really). The hinge was a blank and supports 45 pounds, it was $3 and also 3/16ths steel - contrasting with big box hardware's pretty pathetic hinges under 2.5 inches (you only need 2 inches). Align and secure the hinge drill the hinge holes - if you cut first you are in for a much more difficult job. Zero skippage now - the spring needs to have quite some tension though.
I fastened the bar I dropped off the relief and put a bolt right where it needed to be to align with the wheel's bolt - I also used a much longer connector nut. I pretty much got a drill press for nexdome, but I also needed a dremel the relief intersected place where the hole needed to go, I was able to use the metal cutter routing bit to take away the section I needed to. A grinder may also have worked - all this work required a bunch of varying sizes of clamps and a workbench to do safely - I have some quick setup tables that give me clamp spots. Mistakes were made but I kept playing with it and it seems to work well and is very secured. Motor used #8 machine screws by the way.
Pete, nicely done! Yep, there are just minor cosmetic differences. I did change the bolt to a longer one. My bracket was painted white when I got it. Yours looks dark gray. This modification has worked perfectly for me since I devised it. I spent a lot of time thinking about the best and easiest way to do it before I came up with this. Without this modification your dome needs to be perfectly round now and into the future. With the modification, you have a compensated system for minor fluctuations due to temperature, age, etc. I agree that I think something like this should be a factory modification.
The appearance of the two pictures is a bit different, i.e., the steel bracket is different and the bolt to the wheel is different. Is that simply a reflection of different ages of the dome rotation motor and assembly?
Well I did this mod and it works like a dream! Perfect mesh all the time and no bidding. 4hrs to do and 2 trips to the hardware store was all it took. Thanks Stacey for coming up with this. Well worth the effort.
Could you share a link to the items on Amazon? I was just reading over on the thread about dome skipping and a similar thread on CN about using an epoxy filler to help smooth out the gaps. Would there be any advantage to that in-addition to doing your spring loaded mod?
Spring and hinge came from Amazon.
It's worked perfectly. Never had a bit of trouble. Really made a BIG difference.
How well has this worked out?