5200 trak-ball doesn't stay seated when rolled WNW / NW / NNW

[+x=usr(1536)]

My apologies in advance if this is a known issue with the 5200 trak-ball.  The one that I have now is my first, so I'm not at all familiar with them.

 

Background: I recently acquired this trak-ball, and the bearings were shot.  I replaced them with the Console5 bearing kit, and the replacement went fine.  The trak-ball itself was also given a good cleaning.

 

While it seems to work just fine, what I've noticed is that when it's rolled WNW through NW to NNW, there's a tendency for the trak-ball itself to hop.  What I mean by this is that it feels as though it's jumping off of the rollers for a moment when moved in that direction - there's a noticeable skip in its movement.

 

Anyone have any pointers?  I'm not sure if this should be expected behaviour or not.

[fiddlepaddle]

I was curious, so I took mine out of the ziplock bag it's been in for many years to check it out.  I can't actually test it with a working console right now, but I remember it works OK the last time I did, maybe 10 years ago (yes, I know, that's a long time).

 

Mine has smooth rolling when going up and down, OR when going left and right, but anything in between requires more force for the same lateral movement.  This is intuitively expected, as both bearings are rolling at once.  I suspect you are just sensing some aspect of this. 

 

I know that those huge arcade trackballs for Atari Football, which worked great, were very heavy. 

 

Perhaps pressing down harder will help compensate, but I bet the best solution is to have freer-moving bearings, not sure if that's even doable without significant effort or even possible with available parts.

[+x=usr(1536)]

10 hours ago, fiddlepaddle said:

I was curious, so I took mine out of the ziplock bag it's been in for many years to check it out.  I can't actually test it with a working console right now, but I remember it works OK the last time I did, maybe 10 years ago (yes, I know, that's a long time).

 

Mine has smooth rolling when going up and down, OR when going left and right, but anything in between requires more force for the same lateral movement.  This is intuitively expected, as both bearings are rolling at once.  I suspect you are just sensing some aspect of this.

Which is entirely possible.  However, the issue only really happens going through that 45-degree segment between WNW and NNW.  That particular area has no support / idler bearing under it, so perhaps it's more likely to skip?

10 hours ago, fiddlepaddle said:

I know that those huge arcade trackballs for Atari Football, which worked great, were very heavy.

Ditto Missile Command.  I once dropped one of those on my toes; it legitimately hurt.

10 hours ago, fiddlepaddle said:

Perhaps pressing down harder will help compensate, but I bet the best solution is to have freer-moving bearings, not sure if that's even doable without significant effort or even possible with available parts.

That's the thing - I don't really tend to press down on trak-balls unless I'm doing something that requires a lot of sudden stopping force and/or precise manoeuvring.  I just happened to pick up on this behaviour because I wanted to see how it did at high speed through its range of motion and it cropped up fairly quickly.