Oilon

I am in process of making screw cutting clutch, S7, Graham Meek, design. I have run out of Tufnol, but seen pictures of the first two gears in the train made in Oilon. This is a considerably cheaper material and already in bar form. Will this work as a working material for this?

I made mine from Tufnol running on sealed ball races, but I would think Oilon (Oil Filled Nylon) would be a good modern alternative and certainly worth giving it a go.

Phil

Nylacast have pictures of oilon components on their website that include gears so they think it is good for this purpose. If you have trouble getting small quantities at a low price I may have some scrap stock.

Martin C

Peter,

I made two black nylon gears for that position, thinking that to be a good alternative; I don't have the green oil loaded material. The rearmost gear which has metal gears sharing the overall width, so roughly half per gear, was fine to start with but the teeth meshing with the 30 T input gear finally distorted and began to fold over. It very quickly tore those off.

​I replaced that one with one made in Tufnol, the other wide gear is still in use, the combination runs very well and quietly. If I have more replacements to make I will be thinking of Delrin as the next material, Tufnol sheet is rather expensive in those thicknesses

Regards
Brian

Sorry Peter, the gear that did the rolling over damage was the outer 30 T clutch gear, made in bronze; not the one I said earlier. The operational effects were of course the same.

Brian

PM "KWIL" on here if you have any questions, it is his clutch in the photos and he used oilon and it works very well.

Direct Plastics sell green oilon rod , not that expensive.

Thanks for all the input.

Nylacast link useful for the mechanical data. I have an old trade article on design of polymer gears so will pop the numbers in. Similar tensile but Oilon about half the impact and compressive strength of Tufnol. But other than noise assume that still useful to have a mechanical "fuse" in the system and not a problem if I make some spares.

Direct Plastics was were I was looking

45mm dia x 500 @£12.55 going to yield about 22 slices, where as 200x300 x 20 Tufnol @ £43

I have got a small scrap of Tufnol which squeezed one blank of each 30T and 25T will but will a couple of teeth the tips will be missing, but even if I just use the Oilon to prove the rack cutter, which my preferred gear cutting method.

Thanks