Sellers Turntable Cure!
I’ve reported in the past that I was having serious trouble with the Sellers turntable model, and getting it to rotate smoothly. Here’s what I’ve learned:
As built, the center of the turntable floats about 3/32" above the cast "pivot" bushing. All of the weight is carried by the little wheels at the end of the bridge. On my particular model, one of the wheels does not precisely track the ring rail (the other three wheels line up perfectly). This, coupled with the slight slop in the bushing, allowed the bridge to bind up when the turntable was "armstronged" around.
This evening, I fooled around with the thing a bit, and tried inserting some washers on the shaft between the cast bushing in the pit, and resin block in the center of the bridge. When I reached a thickness that raised the center just a hair above ring rail, suddenly, the turntable rotated super-smoothly! As I thought last May, a larger bearing surface in the center of the bridge does the deal. My task now is to find two nylon or Teflon washers exactly half thickness of the area I need to fill. Finally, I’ll add a collet on the bottom of the shaft to hold the bridge in place and apply just a little friction to the whole works. Ideally, I would like to use a pulley and another nylon bushing for that, to accommodate future motorized or hand-cranked operation. But, I’ll take what I can get.
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