Peter Wales
Key Veteran
Location: Orlando Fl
| In this particular application, the gears will be running fairly fast, around 4000 rpm on the small one, so any excess grease is going to get flung everywhere. Bronze has low metal to metal friction so I'll go with Teflon based grease, but just a smear on each tooth to act as a lubricant when running in. Bronze oxidizes fairly quickly and thats what turns the gear black, rubbing the oxide off. It still goes everywhere the first flight, but is easy to clean off with an alcohol soaked rag.
If you use wax in a running gear situation, it will get squidged out of between the gears pretty quickly, flung all over the helicopter and get things very messy, especially with a turbine power plant and its gearbox cooling fan very close. However, after a couple of hours running, you will have a nicely lubricated gear train
For slow moving parts like the Yaw control rod, its fine, but I prefer a squirt of teflon based lubricant half way between a an oil and a grease, it drips down between the sliding parts better.
As long as you dont run metal to metal moving parts dry, you will be fine. Its just like the swash plates and washout assemblies on an electric, or even the swashplates on the coax.
I have virtually standardize on TRI FLOW lubricants on my models as they have 3 products which suit all my applications. Oil, Aerosol thin grease and thicker grease, all PTFE based.
Peter Wales |
