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Old 10-03-2016, 07:31 PM   #14
Chance
Senior Member
 
Brand: Still Looking
State: Texas
Posts: 6,187
THOR #2121
Quote:
Originally Posted by JamieGeek View Post
A couple of other points:

Those motors aren't very big so the slide must be well balanced and have additional "rollers" (hence the problems with the full wall slides not working well with the Schwintek system when the rollers aren't installed properly). Thus it may not take a lot of oomph to push the slide in.

The other thing not mentioned there: A user may not have the best access to the motor (like in the Axis/Vegas 24.1 the motor towards the rear of the camper: Inside access is blocked by the bathroom wall).

Our Axis came with a slide-lock. The only time I would even consider using it is if there was an issue and I had removed the motors. No precut 2x4 is necessary: The slide-lock should suffice.
Great point on not being able to access motors from inside in some cases depending on layout. In that case you'd have to pull it out or disengage from outside. That's also the case if the slide fails in fully-extended position where access to the motors from inside is limited.

Because of gearing, it doesn't necessarily take much power to move a slide. It may take a huge amount of force, but because they are moved a short distance at very low speeds, it doesn't take much power (as in horsepower or watts).

The problem I see is that the rollers support the weight, but because of their location, the entire slide room tries to pivot out from the top. The only thing that appears to prevent that from happening is the top and bottom rack-and-pinion drives fighting each other -- one pulls in and the other out. It may not be obvious, but I'm pretty sure that under load these drives are not going to want to rotate freely.

I'm just saying that when you try to push one of these slides manually, it's not necessarily the weight-carrying rollers that will resist the most. If it were just the rollers it would move easily. I've moved 2,000-pound engines on a hoist by pushing or pulling with one hand (steel wheels on steel rails have very little resistance).

In the case of slides, I believe the drives at top and bottom have some built-in friction that will resist motion even if the motors are disengaged. The heavier the slide the more these will want to bind and make it harder to push the slide in manually.

I'm just making an educated guess here, but if I was going to try to push a slide close by hand, I would push inward as high as possible to minimize gearing friction. If that wasn't possible because of height, I would then try to lift up on outer edge of slide room while pushing inward.
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