Baitcaster casting technique

[Mhan7]

Yeah, that's the "thrust washer" that I'm talking about.  But if you take up the space inside the bearing with grease and dirt, you could, in essence, make the micro-grime inside the bearing act as a pseudo-thrust washer.  It's only really going to be a problem when your reel is filthy.

 

Even precision bearings have some play and clearance.  In my experience, the negation of the bearing's performance is most visible in the off-thrust axis.  If it's dirty enough, the whole systems suffers.

[Mhan7]

Here is a nice illustration of an angular contact bearing.  Angular contact bearings are meant to take up thrust loads.  They can handle loads optimally in all every direction that falls within the "contact angle".  But they do it at the expense of contact area, which results in more friction, and less free rotation.  (but this is absolutely mandatory for heavy, shifting loads)

 

 

Our bearings in our reels do not have a contact angle.  The loads are radially transferred from the tangent point of the spherical ball, into the inner and outer race.  If you change the load angle, by shifting the force, it results in the bearing transferring forces through the force vector, and creates a situation where the inner and outer race want to move in opposing directions.  In extreme cases, it can result in premature wear, where the bearing races can actually separate.  Lucky for us, that's probably never going to happen.  So why is it worth mentioning?

 

Quite simply...  When you shift a load - even a small load - into the non-thrust axis of the bearing, you change the performance.  The graphic shows the angular relief in this bearing being at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock positions.  In our bearings, we would have the angular relief in the areas that this bearing has angular contact.  Imagine a force being transmitted off of the thrust axis, and into the pockets of grime in a dirty bearing.  You could easily see how this could lead to a drastic reduction in bearing performance.  And yes, while you have a mechanism in place to prevent the spool from shifting, the clearances on the bearing are much more precise.  You can't negate bearing play by having a plastic thrust washer.  It's just a simple tolerance stackup.  The bearing suffers everytime.

 

We can't always cast perfectly with the spool axis parallel to the horizon.  Lucikly, it's not really that much of an issue.  Except... when... your... reel... is... filthy.

 

We do generate a certain amount of angular thrust when we cast, due to the line pull on the spool.  that amount of force will oscillate, as will the direction, depending on which way the line is being pulled of the spool.  It will be amplified by the RPM of the spool.  We will see vibration forces, also, depending on how balanced the spool is, and the combination of the aforementioned factors.  So much physics going on with every single cast...

 

However, and all of this, I do not subscribe to the notion that orientation of the reel affects the centrifugal stopping power of the brakes.   I'm much more inclined to attribute discrepancies to what's going on in the spool.  

 

I used to work in an R&D lab, and we got a custom made dynamic balancing machine one day.  I was surprised at how much emphasis they placed on making sure that the machine was level.  (There were no centrifugal brakes on this particular dynamic balancing machine) However, when the techs started explaining to me how they considered the compound forces for their calibration routine, it made me start thinking alot about how this applied to similar mechanisms...

[J Francho]

12 minutes ago, Mhan7 said:

Here is a nice illustration of an angular contact bearing.

These are how my skate board bearings are made.  You can actually completely disassemble the bearing by removing the shield and plastic cage.  The let all the balls got to one side and take it apart.

[Mhan7]

5 minutes ago, J Francho said:

These are how my skate board bearings are made.  You can actually completely disassemble the bearing by removing the shield and plastic cage.  The let all the balls got to one side and take it apart.

I'm actually glad you mentioned that, because I slightly screwed up that previous explanation...

 

Here is the proper graphic with the illustration between angular contact and radial.  It's been awhile, and I shot from the hip.  Rather than do damage control, I'll just post the clarification...

 

 

So there are bearings which have double angular contact (in opposing directions, for balance) but they also have 2 inner races. At least all that I have seen.

 

The big difference, as noted above, is the angle of contact.  Radial bearings have a very shallow angle of contact, where the angular contact have a higher.  Nevertheless... while I goofed my description of bearings, I still maintain my explanation of the mechanics behind them.

[OCdockskipper]

This thread is an excellent example of why both engineers and non-engineers are needed in this world.  The first group will figure things out to the most minute detail while the second grabs the rod out of their hand saying "dude, they are busting on top, just make a cast!!".

 

Each needs the other.

[Mhan7]

1 minute ago, OCdockskipper said:

This thread is an excellent example of why both engineers and non-engineers are needed in this world.  The first group will figure things out to the most minute detail while the second grabs the rod out of their hand saying "dude, they are busting on top, just make a cast!!".

 

Each needs the other.

And would you believe that there are actually a few of us who have the rare ability to do our thinking at home, and our fishing on the water?

[Mhan7]

1 hour ago, BaitFinesse said:

Turning the reel on its side is not going to make the spool spin longer or have less friction in the spool bearings.

This is absolutely true.  If anything, it's going to have just the opposite effect.

 

Add to that the fact that if you have the full weight of the spool bearing on the thrust washer, there will be an added frictional component, that will make it slow down even more so. When it's horizontal, it's going to still contact, but not with the same force as when vertical.

 

In all of this, we are talking about VERY small forces.

 

As a side note...  I performance tuned a few of my surf rigs, some years back.  I built a couple of small test jigs, in which I would mount the spool with bearings, and see how long I could spin up the spool, when empty.  The very best tournament casters were boasting times of 2+ minutes on rocket tuned bearings. (totally impractical for fishing, by the way)  I was happy with 30-45 seconds.

Do you think I got better times with a vertically oriented spool?  I'll tell you as a matter of fact, the answer is absolutely NO.  On a dead clean set of bearings, with no mass other than the spool itself, the spin time was significantly less than a horizonal spool shaft.