Roller Screws
1213E_MSD_EXCO 1/11/06 10:06 AM Page 37 SIZEWISE Edited by Colleen Telling Sizing and applying ROLLER SCREWS Gary Shelton Roller screw shaft Principal Design Engineer Ground shaft Exlar Corp. Timing gear planetary Chanhassen, Minn. Roller screw nut roller screw How it works Roller screws convert ro- tary motion into linear mo- Roller screws’ tion just like acme and numerous ballscrews. Comparably contact points sized roller screws, however, vs. ballscrews’, have better efficiency than lengthen their acme screws and can carry lives and Spacer larger loads than ballscrews. washer increase load In addition, they can cycle Roller timing gear capacity and more often and turn signifi- stiffness. They Roller cantly faster than either, contain ground suiting them to precise, con- Retaining clip leadscrews for high- tinuous-duty applications. Roller journal precision applications Radiused flanks on the and come in tolerance rollers deliver point contact classes G1, G3, G4, and G5. like balls on a raceway, and only the radius is part of the profile. Therefore, a larger radius transversely and a precision- and additional contact points can ground spacer is inserted be- be packed into the available tween the front and back halves. space, thus lowering stress. In ad- The double nut is another alter- dition, the rolling contact be- native. As the name suggests, it tween components has low fric- uses two nuts preloaded against tion, yielding high efficiency. Be- each other on one screw. There is cause the rolling members are no sacrifice of life for its de- fixed relative to each other and creased backlash, but the double never touch adjacent rollers, nut costs more than standard sin- roller screws can turn at speeds gle-nut arrangements.
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