Pinion bushing vs bearing on lever drags

[JasonGotaProblem]

Also, how do spherical bearings stack up for this task? I imagine those are very deep groove bearings?

[jurelometer]

Also, how do spherical bearings stack up for this task? I imagine those are very deep groove bearings?

You can look it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_bearing 

Reels don't have an intentionally changing rotational axis or the room to stuff in a large bearing

Beryllium copper and now spherical bearings. I think that we are running on fumes at this point.

[oldmanjoe]

 At this point ,pick a reel to dissect .  I thought this started with spinners than swayed to levers .
   Two different animals and the real estate to play with bearings .   

[JasonGotaProblem]

It's always been about lever drags I just took some inspiration from an aspect of spinner innards.

Maybe that inspiration was misguided. But I'm enjoying this thread so far.

[boon]

Side note that there was a revision of the Omoto VS10, the original ones had a _tiny_ pinion bearing that would die a horrible death very quickly, they upsized it considerably in the revised design but it still doesn't last long.

Have a read of the threads in the Okuma forum about upgrading either Makairas or Metaloids with angular contact bearings. It works very well in the pinion position to reduce binding when increasing the drag, however as we (myself and Redsetta) discovered, the next weakest point is the left side spool bearing, which is extremely hard to find in an ACB in that size, so a really deep groove was the best we could come up with.

Re. the designs so far, I think you're mistaking where the problem is by trying to solve friction with the pinion. That is not the issue. The problem is that to produce drag you have to have a clamping force, which is applied by pulling the spool towards the drive side plate via the spool shaft, compressing every component on the spool shaft. This pushes the inner race of the pinion bearing towards the sideplate, transferring the entire clamping load to the sideplate via the balls of the bearing and then the outer race. You can have all the doohickeys you want surrounding the pinion, but you need a thing that spins and can transfer an axial load.

Okuma largely solved this in the Solterra X by putting a thrust bearing on top of both the left side spool bearing and the pinion, and it works superbly, in my opinion.

[steelfish]

Okuma largely solved this in the Solterra X by putting a thrust bearing on top of both the left side spool bearing and the pinion, and it works superbly, in my opinion.

completely agree with you.

that Solterra SL-X is one of the most smooth leverdrag reels I have used, with smooth Im referring to increase the drag with the lever and still have a pretty freely sensation when turning the handle, on that same amount of drag (lets say 17#) the penn fathom show a resistance on the handle but the handle on the Solterra X still turns as freely as a star drag reel and Im talking about the small model Solterra 10 SL-X