Trackball problems - any tips for me?

[markronz]

Ok, I have an X-Arcade trackball.   I have had one in the past and it worked fine.  This new one I have is giving me some problems.  When I roll the ball is doesn't go exactly left/right or exactly up/down.   Towards the end of it's motion, the ball tends to drift towards a different direction.  I've attached a picture of what the mouse pretty much does.  Actually it's probably a bit more of an exaggerated curve than whats shown in the attached picture.  When I am looking at the Windows desktop this is what the cursor does when I spin the ball up or to the right, etc.     One of the encoder wheels looked a little bent to me, and I had two extras, so I tried using those instead.  They did not fix the problem.   I then tried to use WD40 on all the roller ends and bearings.  That did not seem to help either.   The weird part to me is that when I take out the trackball, as you know there are three rollers in there.   When I use my finger to roll the roller for the X axis, and I roll only that roller by itself, then it works perfectly.   Same thing with the Y axis. If I use my finger and just roll that roller, the cursor moves perfectly up and down.   So to me that would indicate that the optical eye chip things, and the encoder wheels ARE working as they should.  The problem seems to be just that the rollers are not rolling together.   I thought that oiling them up would help but it did not.    I've even tried to swapping the bearings between rollers in different configurations, and none of them seem to correct the problems. 

So does anyone have any tips for me here on what I can try to correct this?  I am thinking maybe I just need to try to get all new bearings and try those, but I'm saving that for a last resort.   Not sure what I will do if the new rollers don't fix the issue either...  I don't really want to buy a new trackball...

[BobA]

Do the rollers have wear marks in them?   If they do you may have to replace them.  Make sure you have cleaned them and the ball well along with the lubricating that you have done.  Regular lubricating oil works better than WD40.

[markronz]

The trackball was new when I got it.  So it's really only been used the last week or two while I've been setting it up.  So there are no noticable wear marks on the rollers themselves.

About the "regular lubricating oil"...  I'm not normally a very mechanical person, so all I have is WD40.  I can get other stuff at the store, but could you clarify a little more as to what "regular lubricating oil" is exactly?  Or what I would be looking for when I went to the store?

[bpark42]

About the "regular lubricating oil"...  I'm not normally a very mechanical person, so all I have is WD40.  I can get other stuff at the store, but could you clarify a little more as to what "regular lubricating oil" is exactly?  Or what I would be looking for when I went to the store?

Get some 3 in 1 oil.  Just ask for it at home depot/lowes/your hardware store.

[BobA]

New trackballs most times have thick grease in the bearings and this has to be worked out for the trackball to function properly.

[markronz]

About the "regular lubricating oil"...  I'm not normally a very mechanical person, so all I have is WD40.  I can get other stuff at the store, but could you clarify a little more as to what "regular lubricating oil" is exactly?  Or what I would be looking for when I went to the store?

Get some 3 in 1 oil.  Just ask for it at home depot/lowes/your hardware store.

Thanks!  I will ask for this.  Is it like a spray that I just spray onto the bearings?  Or is it a thicker stuff that I need to rub onto it?  If thicker, I assume I would just rub this onto the sides of the bearings and that's all I'd need to do right?

New trackballs most times have thick grease in the bearings and this has to be worked out for the trackball to function properly.

When you say worked out, what do you mean by this?  Should I just spend some time spinning my trackball to get this worked out then?

[bpark42]

Thanks!  I will ask for this.  Is it like a spray that I just spray onto the bearings?  Or is it a thicker stuff that I need to rub onto it?  If thicker, I assume I would just rub this onto the sides of the bearings and that's all I'd need to do right?

You just drip it on.  The spout is made for precise direct application.  Afterward give the rollers a good spin, either by hand or in a drill.  Make sure the rollers and the ball are clean before you put everything back together.

[nancyd589]

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[markronz]

Ok, so I am finally revisiting this issue as it is still not resolved.    I bought new bearings for my trackball from GGG, and its a little better, but still not quite right.    I did a little testing.  If I pick up a roller, and give the bearings a good spin with my finger, 4 of the 6 of them will continue to spin for 6 - 8 seconds.    The remaining two bearings will only spin for maybe 2 seconds.   So I'm gonna have a crazy guess here, and guess that my trackball problems are directly related to the poorly spinning bearings.

Tomorrow I am going to go get some 3-in-1 oil from the hardware store to put on all of them.   I've read in this thread and in others that applying a drop to one side, then spinning for a while on a drill works best.  Then flipping and repeating.    Can someone give me more details about this process?  

What's the best way to spin them with a drill without them flying off?
Is there a limit as to how fast I should spin the drill?  Can I just give 'er?
Is there a length of time I should spin them for?  Is a minute enough?  Is there such a thing as too much spinning in this fashion?
Oh, and is the one drop of 3-in-1 accurate?  Or should I soak them in it?  Or is less oil better?

Thanks!

[markronz]

Alright, I purchased some "electronics cleaner" from Radio Shack, and used this to clean out the bearings.  This was what someone suggested on a different thread.   After using this on them, they all seemed to spin much better than ever before.    I then used some 3-in-1 oil in each bearing.   This slowed them down a bit, from when there was nothing in them, but they still spinned pretty well.   And in the long run, I am sure having oil in there is best.    I spun them on a drill for a few minutes each as well.   Basically I just put a pencil and tightened it in my drill.  Then I put the bearing on the tip of the pencil.    I held onto the bearing, and turned the drill on.   So anyway, I did this for a few minutes each.        I put my newly cleaned, newly oiled, freshly spun bearings back into my trackball.   It still does not spin correctly.  When I give it a good push upwards, the cursor still goes up straight for a moment, and then drifts to the upper left.    If I spin it downward, it drifts to the lower right.   As shown in my picture that I originally attached.  However the drift is much much much more severe than what I've portrayed in my picture.

I feel like throwing this trackball out the window...   

So, I now have two entire trackballs, complete with bearings and encoder wheels and everything.    I also have two more additional encoder wheels, and 6 extra bearings.   With all of these items, I cannot get one single working trackball.   No matter what combination of bearings, wheels etc, I use, I can't get it to roll right.   The drift ruins everything.  It makes games like Golden Tee and any bowling game virtually unplayable.   I rarely, if ever, can get a straight drive/roll.   I've tried using both trackball cases (with their included optical sensor things).   Both do the same thing, so I know it's not the sensors that are the problem.

What am I doing wrong here guys?   Do your trackballs go completely straight up and stay straight when you give them a good push?   Should I just give up here?    I am at a complete loss. 

[markronz]

Ok, one thing to add.  In the trackball, there are three rollers, of course.  I was watching it closely to see if I could figure out what was happening inside there.    To get a perfect upward direction, the one roller with the optical wheel on the top needs to spin.  As a result, the diagonal roller (the one without the wheel) should also spin.  These two rollers make the cursor move completely straight upwards.    BUT what happens when I push straight up is that the third roller, the one that controls left and right motion, also moves slightly.    If I put my finger onto the left and right roller to hold it in place and then spin the trackball, the cursor goes straight up, like I want it to.

So I'm not sure what to fix here, but it seems really touchy in there.   When I push the ball straight up, I would expect the third roller would stay in place. 

Any thoughts here whats going on or how to help me?

[RandyT]

What am I doing wrong here guys?   Do your trackballs go completely straight up and stay straight when you give them a good push?   Should I just give up here?    I am at a complete loss. 

I think you may be "pushing a rope" for the most part.  There is a mechanical dynamic that is pretty hard to fight in a 3-roller system.  It's not terribly unlike expecting the ball to behave exactly the same way, regardless of the direction you try to spin it.  It's just not going to happen.  Marble Madness even uses the trackballs in a different than normal orientation, presumably to counter this.  Every trackball I have seen so far has a little bit of drift.  It makes perfect sense, because there is going to be a differing amounts of friction based on the direction of the spin in relation to the geometry of the rollers.

Making the rollers spin as freely as possible is the best you can hope for.  Outside of that, you'd need to design a new trackball.

RandyT

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I haven't thought this all the way through yet... but I wonder if something akin to a 'deadzone' word work... make it dynamically adjusted based on the speed in the other axis... Essentially turning down the sensitivity setting as an inverse function of the velocity of the other, scaled logarithmically so that as the dampened axis' velocity increased proportionally to the non-dampened, the dampening effect is not as strong.

Though I suppose this wouldn't be very 'authentic'.

[markronz]

What am I doing wrong here guys?   Do your trackballs go completely straight up and stay straight when you give them a good push?   Should I just give up here?    I am at a complete loss. 

I think you may be "pushing a rope" for the most part.  There is a mechanical dynamic that is pretty hard to fight in a 3-roller system.  It's not terribly unlike expecting the ball to behave exactly the same way, regardless of the direction you try to spin it.  It's just not going to happen.  Marble Madness even uses the trackballs in a different than normal orientation, presumably to counter this.  Every trackball I have seen so far has a little bit of drift.  It makes perfect sense, because there is going to be a differing amounts of friction based on the direction of the spin in relation to the geometry of the rollers.

Making the rollers spin as freely as possible is the best you can hope for.  Outside of that, you'd need to design a new trackball.

RandyT

Thanks Randy I suspected as much.  Any tips for me on how to get the bearings to spin better?  They spinned better before I put on the 3-in-1 oil, should I remove that?   If not, is it just a matter of spinning it longer?  Should I try to rig something up with my drill where they spin for a more extended period of time?

[markronz]

I haven't thought this all the way through yet... but I wonder if something akin to a 'deadzone' word work... make it dynamically adjusted based on the speed in the other axis... Essentially turning down the sensitivity setting as an inverse function of the velocity of the other, scaled logarithmically so that as the dampened axis' velocity increased proportionally to the non-dampened, the dampening effect is not as strong.

Though I suppose this wouldn't be very 'authentic'.

I think I followed that.  That would work although I'm not sure I would know how to accomplish that.  For me, having it work in games is more important than authenticity.

[markronz]

I think you may be "pushing a rope" for the most part. 

RandyT

I was unfamiliar with that expression, so I googled it, and found this:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pushing%20Rope

I'm just guessing you didn't mean that.   

Found the real meaning on a different website, just thought the above one was funny.

[RandyT]

Thanks Randy I suspected as much.  Any tips for me on how to get the bearings to spin better?  They spinned better before I put on the 3-in-1 oil, should I remove that?   If not, is it just a matter of spinning it longer?  Should I try to rig something up with my drill where they spin for a more extended period of time?

You aren't likely to find any oil which is thinner than 3 in 1 that still does anything to protect the bearings, and won't dry up or run off. 

This would make an engineer cringe, but if you want bearings to loosen up, accelerate the wear on the races.  To do this, you could try cleaning the oil out and run the ball for a while with only some WD-40 or similar.  When you start seeing it spinning the way you want it to, clean the bearings up and get some 3 in 1 back into them.  Don't go for too long, because un-oiled metal breeds corrosion when any moisture at all is introduced, and you don't want that.  Also don't be surprised if it gets loud once you strip out the lubrication.

Don't get mad at me if you ruin your bearings with the above.  Eventually, even the grease packed ones will loosen up on their own, with enough use.  So my official recommendation is to live with it the best you can while using it as much as you can, with the 3-in-1 or similar light oil.  Or, continue with the drill approach.

I was unfamiliar with that expression, so I googled it, and found this:

Heh.  Never saw it used that way.  No, it's a way of saying that you are putting a lot of effort into something that won't ultimately achieve much.

[markronz]

Thanks Randy!  I will give it a shot.   I am making it for a friend and I just want it to work right before I deliver it.  Makes me feel stoopid to have to tell him that he can't play Golden Tee and etc.  The bearings are spinning much better now, but still some pretty severe drifting.  Hopefully that will change.

[markronz]

Stop spamming people plugging your blog!

[RandyT]

Stop spamming people plugging your blog!

Who are you talking to?

[upprc04]

Stop spamming people plugging your blog!

Who are you talking to?

I'm guessing the person spamming peoples' PM boxes or replied to a post that got deleted.

[markronz]

Yes, that guy spamming his blog replied to like very thread he could.  Admins deleted all his posts, but not everyone's rebuttals.  

I swear I don't talk to myself...often.