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Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
Has anyone else seen fitment issues with the Thunderhex and the Thunderhex bearings after you tapped the end of the shaft. Another mentor brought this to my attention. The thought is the end of the Thunderhex shaft is deforming out when tapped which causes issues in trying to install it into the Thunderhex bearing. The mentor plans to try Hex bearings, but I think he will have the same issue.
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Re: Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
Take the Thunderhex and clamp it in a drill. Then take sand paper and wrap it around the Thunderhex. Spin the Thunderhex while moving the sand paper up and down it. It will wear away the paint on the rounded edges making it easier to fit in the bearing.
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Re: Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
I did notice last week that one of our shafts was a little harder to get in the bearing than I expected, and we had tapped that end of the shaft. It still fit, though, so I didn't really think much of it.
Try taking a file to the end of the shaft. Maybe there's a small burr there from cutting the shaft? |
Re: Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
This warning is in red on the thunderhex page itself
Note: Due to a manufacturing variance, our current inventory is slightly out of tolerance. The diameter of our ThunderHex Stock is oversized by (on average) 0.0003". This results in a press-fit into ThunderHex round bearings. Users who need a looser fit should gently sand the rounded corners of the hex. |
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I'm assuming the removed burrs, but will check tonight and will have them try sanding them down. Some of the shafts are long, so we will probably clamp in our lathe and run some emery cloth on them.
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Our team has always had issues with the thunderhex being oversize enough where bearings, sprockets, ect won't slide on easily. As others have said, take some sand paper and put it in a drill to remove some of the paint. This usually lakes care of it, but sometimes you have to file down the actual sides.
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Because of these issues our team has stopped using thunderhex as axles, only using leftover materials as cool-looking standoffs.
Last year was thunderhex hell for our team |
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Last year we almost always used thunderhex axle with regular hex bearings. This allowed for the ease of tapping but also an easier operation of getting the shaft into the bearing.
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Personally, I think dealing with Thunderhex being a little oversized is a lot easier than dealing with regular hex being oversized. At least with Thunderhex we can toss it on the lathe and take a couple thou off, and once you dial in the amount you need, it's pretty easy to run down an entire shaft. Heck, in the few cases where we feel a need to use solid hex (instead of Thunderhex with the hole in the middle), we turn it down to fit in thunderhex bearings. It's just easier to slide the shafts in and out of thunderhext than it is trying to get the shaft prperly aligned with the inner race of a hex bearing.
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Re: Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
We haven't noticed any fitment issues after tapping our thunderhex, but it certainly seems possible. What size tap are you running, 1/4-20?
The batch of thunderhex we bought before this preseason had no fitment issues, we love it. -Mike |
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Anyhow, for us it's now a standard practice to take some emory cloth and shaft stock and run it on the lathe for a second or two before fitting into bearings. Just enough to strip the anodize layer off should do it. (We also use the "tight press" bearings because they are so cheap in 11-packs) ThunderHex is way, way, way better than regular hex. I'll never go back to regular hex bearings - they are a pain to fit, a pain to align, and they are far harder to fix the shaft for if they fit too tightly. |
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Thanks for the feedback. I'm leaning this way myself. Hearing confirmation from others is re-assuring. |
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I have used shrinking to fit thunderhex into bearings before. I used liquid nitrogen(-320 F) to do it, but dry ice(-109 F) should do just fine and a lot of grocery stores carry it.
Aluminum shrinks/expands ~0.001"-0.0015" per inch per 100 degrees F, which you can get about 1 thou shrink with dry ice or about 2 with liquid nitrogen. |
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It could even just be our wheels too. I've been too busy with other parts of the robot to address the seemingly trivial problem that is axle size. We're just happy we didn't need to slice of faces of the shaft on a mill this year We also get hex shaft from a local metals warehouse, Discount Steel. They may or may not ship to your area... but if you have a local metals warehouse I'd imagine they would have hex shaft. If you do have a shop nearby bring hex bearings and test them on the shafts before you buy them |
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Thanks! |
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To all the teams struggling with hex shaft and bearings, here are some tips I've accumulated over the past year on the subject:
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Re: Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
This will be our 3rd year using thunderhex. All of our old stock had to be polished to fit bearings. The new stock from this year seems to fit fine.
If the bearings fit before tapping then don’t after tapping, the tap needs thrown away. The tap is deforming the material not cutting it. Anodize is very abrasive on cutting tools. Mr. Mike |
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We have old and new Thunderhex and if you do not drill out prior to tapping we have seen it expand, but not if we drill out with #7 before tapping. |
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All the Thunderhex being used was purchased this season. |
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Obviously machining it is annoying, but once it's done, you're probably set. -Aren |
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This thread reminds me of why I preferred round shaft prior to all the major FRC CoTS suppliers switching to hex.
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Turns out there was only 1 or 2 shafts that had deformed enough that the Thunderhex bearing would not go on.
Thanks for all the tips and tricks, a couple we knew, but a couple we didn't. |
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-Mike |
Re: Thunderhex and Thunderhex Bearings
I guess we got lucky. :) We bought an 8' length of the 1018 cold rolled hex from onlinemetals.com. It fit our bearings as well as any of our aluminum shafts. The ends were snug (presumably from shipment) but still looser than a press fit. Along the length of the shaft, the bearing slid freely.
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