I was doing research and I ran across something that someone had pointed out as being the #1 killer of the Stainz and the tender's power trucks. Plastic Worm Gears. I looked at part manufacturer's like Massoth but not even they produce these parts (Massoth does Parts, nothing more, if I'm wrong, please wipe their name out). Plastic Worm Gears. Basic knowledge of the power truck disassembly makes it easy to access the worm gears. So at my job today, I custom machined 2 sets of Metal worm gears made out of the same aluminum we use for our custom rims. I'm going to place them in my units today and test them out. If their successful, I'll pop the trucks open and photograph them for you. Otherwise, back to the drawing board.
Good luck. If it works and you do some long term testing (say 1000 hrs continous running) you could have a marketable product. Keep us posted. Happy Railroading! GovB
Despite the sloppy voltage on my layout, they ran for about 30 minutes okay. I'm going to borrow a set of rollers and set them up in my room and let them run. There really is nothing wrong with the plastic gears, as they are made from high-grade german plastic, but like cheap plastic worm gears, they will eventually break down. I'm trying to avoid this. If the aluminum can hold up under a benchmark of a 1000 hours, then I'm going to look into marketing the product myself. Otherwise I'll look for a better material to work with.
DragonaFyreGT, I didn't know you were a machinist. I'm guessing you work for a custom rim shop. I watch Unique Auto Sports once in a while and see sometimes they get custom rims made. I worked in design and Engneering for 9 years in designing, assembling machinering. Most on my part was to take the engineers blue print, assembly the machine and then run it to see what broke and then make suggestions on what to change to make it better and hold up. Basiclly I was a R & D person. Anyway, aluminum does work well in most applications. I found out that for example aluminum on aluminum don't work well. Another words if you have a aluminum gear driven from another aluminum gear, there was excessive wear if there was no oil flow. Aluminum needs a different metal to run on and found brass to do the trick if you don't want to run a oil lubrication thru a gear box and just use a grease as a lube.
Not actually a machinist. We have a water flow jet machine that we punch a number into a computer that tells the machine what to do. I have someone who always does the "Math" part of the equations heh. It's a customer tuner shop. We pretty much do everything on site, although we're still not fully recovering from the economy yet. I mostly do body work. Bondo, paint, sand, that kind of stuff. Ironic that I can't paint a model train nearly as good as a car body.
Okay, update time. Now I did use my LGB Gear grease inside the motor blocks. I followed their instructions to the letter. Early this morning around 5AM it was chugging along nicely. Then I heard a pop and a fizzle and the tender had shut down. After I was about to eat breakfast, the Stainz shut herself down. Now the Stainz is more important to me so I opened up the motor block for damage control. The worm gear was split, no damage to either units blocks. Back to the drawing board. I will get a replacement worm gear. For now, I swapped their plastic ones in place again. I'll tackle this project when I have some time to sit down and think about this. I emailed Marklin/LGB about my idea and how it would help older units to have a metal worm gear in their trucks. I got a response this morning from Marklin's PR person who said that it sounded like a very good idea and he would pass it along to their Board of Directors and R&D to see what they think. I'm actually impressed that Marklin stopped to at least read my email suggestion.
