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Unread 13-01-2004, 11:34
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Jim Meyer Jim Meyer is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2001
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Location: Milford Michigan
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Re: How to make gears mesh properly.

One of our machinists showed me a trick. You can put a piece of ordinary notebook paper between the two gears and then mash them together as tightly as you can. You can then measure the center distace with your calipers. In my experience it is 0.002 to 0.003 inches more than the pitch diameters would indicate. The result are gears that spin freely with almost no backlash. Basically what Joe J. said.

Some teams I've talked to use the pitch circle spacing and then wear them in with a few hours of operation. I think I remember someone saying they let them run over night.