UMO+ Feeder wheel grinding on screw

[vincentbaas 19]

I am facing a problem with the feeder on my UMO+: the large feeder wheel is touching the bolt below it (holding the body together). It has managed to loosen the lock nut on the bolt multiple times already. The feeder itself is functioning properly in terms of extrusion, only the wheel is causing some friction and noise.

Pictures and video for clarification:

Manually rotating the wheel with the feeder unmounted

 

I have already tried to disassemble the feeder and straighten things by hand, but I can't seem to locate the source of the misalignment. My bearings, knurled nut and the wood itself all seem straight / uniform, so I have ran out of ideas what could be causing this. Any suggestions on how I could fix this problem?

Edited April 19, 2017 by Guest

[peggyb 171]

put a washers in between, I had the same problem.

[rowiac 53]

I think this is a "feature" of the UMO/+ feeder. The large wheel, being made out of plywood, is not perfectly flat. However, it is not really a problem if you assemble the feeder with enough "slop".

Make sure you have two flat washers as spacers on the knurled bolt before installing it through the ball bearings in the feeder. If you already have two washers there, make sure that the knurled bolt is protruding far enough away from the large gear. The assembly instructions provide a guideline, but you may need to adjust it by unscrewing the knurled bolt a bit and re-tightening the acorn nut.

It is OK if you have some axial play between the large wheel/gear and the feeder frame. The knurled bolt and gears are wide enough to accommodate quite a bit of misalignment. The important thing is to avoid friction from the large wheel rubbing on the screw heads, which is what I think your problem is.