Bearing Frustration

I'm thinking four or five inches high, and somewhere between five to seven inches wide between the uprights. "Accuracy" is intimately tied to "$$$" in my brain, so I'd rather find some bearings that can tolerate some slop than try to make this into an aerospace-quality part.

I'll look into channel, though, and see what I can find about having it fabricated from that instead of bent up from sheet.

Sintered Bronze bearings are more commonly known as "oilite", (a brand name) in North America.

Steve R.

All joking aside, take a look at Radio Shack. They have a 10K linear pot for $2.89 qty = 1. I worked at a place that needed stereo volume control pots and the best price they could find was Radio Shack. They got a lot better price than the retail price in the few hundred per month volumes they needed.

Regards, Bob

I will keep that in mind -- I know that you can buy in quantity from those guys.

At this point, if I can mount a PC board with enough accuracy (there's that expensive word again!) the $1.50 pots that I've found will work with no adjustment -- so the whole system will just slap together without fiddling. I find this a very appealing alternative to just about anything that needs special skills to assemble.

One thing which the extruded channel will free you from is the problem of alignment of the holes in the bearings. Bent aluminum is likely to relax a bit over time after bending, so what started out with holes properly aligned would be likely to change (and bind) over time.

If I were building it, and bending, I would look into bearings which were sintered bronze (like Oilite) with a spherical outer dimension, mounted in a hole with a spring plate holding it in position, so the sphere could turn to correct the aligment of the holes.

Enjoy, DoN.