Abstract
Because of the advantages of simple in construction, easily to assemble and has high capacity to compensate automatically for the unbalance of a rotor above the critical speed, the ball balancer is adopted in this research. However, the experimental results show that the ball balancer applied in the optical disk device has the problem of low consistence. To understand the reasons for low consistence, a mathematical model is first constructed for the purpose of theoretically investigating the dynamic behaviors of the foundation and balancing balls. A parametric study on the effects of eccentric race and rolling resistance are then performed. In addition, a test apparatus is constructed to verify the characteristics of the designed ball balancer. The experiment investigations show that the ball balancer is not effective against the unbalance as the wear of the raceway is severe. To cope with these problems, three new designs have been proposed in this research.