Shooter wheel balancing

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by TubaMorg

So we noticed (but pretended not to) that our shooter wheel had a little vibration in it during testing right before shipping. Does anyone have any clever ideas on how to balance it? Obviously we would want to remove a little material from the heavy side (it's an 8" plastic wheel with rubber tread). I was thinking of spinning it a few times by hand and waiting to see which side ends up at the bottom. The problem with this is that the axel bearings are a little stiff, so this method may not be too reliable. Any cool ideas out there? I'm hoping to have time to fix it during our Lonestar Regional, you know how much free time there is! Or maybe we should just call it our ball agitator/shooter

I'm sure the wheels are held at the manufacturing plant for them to some sort of trueness, but the higher RPM they spin the more you notice imperfections.

The wheels you are talking about were probably designed to go way slower than you are spinning them. How many wheelchairs do you know that have the front wheels spinning 20+mph? lol

Anyways, keeping that in mind, check your pillow block or whatever you are affixing it to your frame to. Make sure they are aligned right. One .050" difference in center lines of the block from the X axis will make your wheel wobble a heck of a lot at these high speeds.