Materials and lubrication for gear and bearing surfaces in UHV

During design and construction of the SLAC polarized LEED (PLEED) system, a search was made for a dependable gear, bearing and lubrication system for the computer-controlled Faraday cup used to measure diffracted beams. Components must be nonmagnetic, bakeable to 2500C, and at room temperature must operate at pressures in the 10-9 to 10-10 Pa range. A test system was constructed which incorporated a meshed pair of dissimilar pitch diameter spur gears, one of which was confined by bushings to a fixed shaft on which it rotated, while the other gear was driven through a commercial rotary motion feedthrough rotated by a servo motor driven in sine fashion with a direction reversal every six turns and peak speeds of 50 rpm. The criterion for a successful pair was approx. equal to 105 turns, the life rating for the feedthrough. Pairs had actual turn counts from less than 1 to 91 000. Materials for gears included stainless steel, beryllium copper and aluminium alloys. Lubricants used singly and in concert were MoS2, WS2, Ag, hard chrome and a MoS2-graphite-sodium silicate-coated Be-Cu. Subsequent performance in the PLEED system after repeated bakeouts will also be discussed. (orig.)