Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Line
I understand the structure - the roller bearings and ball bearings etc.
How exactly are the belts driven and cascaded through the system? I'm not seeing how they are connected or function.
|
Imagine a single stage system for simplicity. The belt is pulled by a pulley at the bottom of the "zeroth" stage, and runs over a idler at the top of the zeroth stage. The belt then connects to the bottom of the first moving stage. When the stages are together, the length of the belt is ~2*stage length. When the first stage is extended, the length of the belt is ~1*stage length. Retraction works in the opposite way.
A two stage system works similarly, but with the bottom and top of the first stage being idlers, and the belt being connected to the bottom of the second stage.
I believe there's a pretty good paper on CD-Media which explain all of this in more detail.