I have owned seven TIC ring rotators and never had this skip tooth problem.
Your big gear is not concentric to what? There are so many variations of
TIC rings so it's hard to visualize what you have. Almost all of my big
gear rings were manufactured in three sections. When assembled they are not
round or flat so in my case washers were needed to raise the bearing rollers
to prevent jamming. With a three piece ring and three roller bearings 120°
apart all of the mismatched gear joints hit the three roller bearing at the
same time - brilliant.... But with some assembly care you can make the ring
turn reasonably smooth. The drive motor assembly on all of my rings has the
potentiometer inside. I believe some models have a separate potentiometer
box and I am not sure where they are positioned. The motor assembly on mine
is near the bearing on the frame so even though the ring is not perfectly
round, the ring gear is trapped between the motor gear and bearing so it
stays engaged. I set my motor assembly with a tight engagement, if it
happens to become too tight during the rotating the frame just deflects a
little. I use two drive motors per ring for extra torque. My 1032 TIC ring
rotators have been reliable rotators even with large antennas.
John KK9A
W6NL wrote:
A problem we have with our TIC ring is that the big gear isn't exactly
concentric, and it often skips a tooth or two in the wind. This offsets
the pot, making it vulnerable to running up against the end and being
damaged. So we can't count on the pot, and are hoping to find a way to
adapt either a Hall-efect tooth counter for the ring gear, or an
inexpensive electronic compass sensor.
Over the years we have damaged the coax by going beyond the rotation
limits when the pot is messed up (we use RT-21s with limits, but that
relies on the pot), and are intending to install IP67 limit switches as
well. We also need limit switches for our prop-pitch installations, just
to be sure we have redundant physical limits.
Open to any indicator suggestions, and suggest not to rely only on the pot.
Dave, W6NL/HC8L
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