For a few months now my big strawberry survey robot “MAGI” has been squeaking from it’s front left wheel. Recently it got so bad I refused to drive it anymore and development stalled. This week I gave in and pulled the wheel apart to find the problem. A pair of completely shredded tapered roller bearings proved the culprit.
So turns out no one greased the bearings
Look at that absolutly destroyed!
This is why you grease your bearings people
They still work, in a sort of un-bearingy very screechy way
Rollers falling out all over the place
Here’s a walk through of wheel reassembly, if you’re reading this and actually need to do maintenance on these wheels my only advice is watch out for the sharp edges!
This isn’t the wheel that was squeaking but so long as I had the tools out I tuned up all the rest. Good thing too turns out no one greased any of the bearings when the bot was first assembled.The new bearings, greased and ready for instillation. Warning! The key notch in that shaft is extremely sharp!This is the wheel well assembly, all welded steal manufactured by Shane Thulman a few years agoFirst add the axle and its bearings. Some of the axles had deformed slightly around the key making adding the bearings a bit challenging. This axle also had to be re-tapped after someone (me) used a ball pin hammer to get the bearing on.After re-tapping the bolt hole I was able to mount the gear, the many washers keep the key from falling out the end of the shaft.The final pieces the wheel itself and the chain. There’s still a lot of slack on the chain, we could really use a chain tensioner.
Zachary Eagan 