Trackball Smoothness Revisited (Roller Bearing Mod)

[nybble]

@2disbetter

Very nice! I’m curious how the linear travel of those bearings would be an improvement over the static less resistive bearings. Are you able to quantify that a little bit more? I think from a logic stand point this would be a big improvement. But your experience doesn’t seem to make that that sure conclusion.

Excellent work regardless! Thank you very much for sharing!

Thanks! I’m no mechanical engineer, so this is just my amateur conjecture.

A single roller bearing is super smooth, so I think the intuition is that this should be a clear improvement over the static bearings. The problem is that we need 3 bearings to support the trackball, and the ball’s movement can only be optimally aligned with at most 1 roller bearing at a time (and maybe none of them).

In the non-optimal case, the roller bearing is more like a static ball bearing, but with a less optimal contact surface (edge of cylinder versus point on sphere).