Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: RacerX on April 11, 2003, 11:14:00 am
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I'm having a problem with my Happ trackball. Whenever I roll it to the right, it feels pretty smooth. But when I roll it to the left, it feels "jerky" like it's skipping or something, and it won't roll freely. I understand they need to be lubed once in awhile, but it seems like it wouldn't roll in either direction if this was my problem. But I don't know much about how these things work so I could be dead wrong.
Any ideas?
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They work just like a giant mouse. Maybe the rollers got gunked up like they do in a mouse. (Non-optical). You know when you have to take the ball out of the bottom of your mouse to clean it of the gunk that gets stuck to the rollers. By the way, what is that gunk anyway. Maybe I'll do a chemical analysis. So, pull the ball and clean the gunk off. If of course that's what you have.
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the optical mouse has the same problem but it gets stuck on the little helper balls. it's friggin annoying. I think it's dried flaked off skin. nasty.
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I'm having a problem with my Happ trackball. Whenever I roll it to the right, it feels pretty smooth. But when I roll it to the left, it feels "jerky" like it's skipping or something, and it won't roll freely. I understand they need to be lubed once in awhile, but it seems like it wouldn't roll in either direction if this was my problem. But I don't know much about how these things work so I could be dead wrong.
Any ideas?
If you mounted it like this (http://www.happcontrols.com/images/50/560100xx_thumb.gif)
with the top of the image facing the monitor (as the current directions tell you to), then when you roll left you are pushing the away from the horizontal roller shaft. The idler shaft (the diagonal one) is supposed to keep the ball on the roller shafts. Since you feel the jerkiness, check your idler shalf for bumps, grooves, grime, and hair. One strand of hair can do something as you discribe on my PC trackball. At least the ball can pop right out of the kensington TB, but I think that's also why the hair gets in there so often (once or twice a week).
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I noticed the same thing with my happ TB... except the rollers are perfectly clean and free of gunk. I think this is pretty normal at first, the happ trackball seems to break-in after a bit. Everytime I open it up tho and take the rollers out and put em back in the TB seems to need to break-in all over again. It's like the bearing on the rollers need to 'settle' or something.
the one most helpful thing I know about the Happ TB (after literally hours of screwing with it) is that if you don't tighten the TB's casing screws too tight the spin time will really improve ;)
good luck
Stein
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Well, I finally had time to take the trackball apart and see what's going on. Basically the bearings just needed to be lubed. If the bearings are not rolling as freely as they should, the trackball will "jump" out of it's seat between the 3 rollers just a bit when you roll it to the right (I had it backwards in my original post).