Gearbox is greased and back together. Took me two attempts since I forgot a plastic cover that has to be installed before the arm is bolted back on.
When I was figuring out how to remove the flex spline cup, I had loosened the 8 bolts holding the harmonic drive to the robot's casting. At this point I was not yet aware that the output bearing was integral to the harmonic drive (it is not in J3-5). The whole arm started to lean sideways as I loosened the last bolt. I did tighten everything back down, but I thought it might be prudent to double check that I did not marr the mounting surfaces of the casting.
This image is kinda cool. I think there might be (2) crossed roller bearings. There is an obvious split line down the middle of the text, but also two harder to see split lines above and below the text, making (4) total rings stacked. I think the hard to see split lines are the two halves of each crossed roller bearing compressed to generate preload. The excessive number of bolts along the perimeter are used to compress these rings.
Here is the housing where the harmonic drive mounts.
And the arm back together with the side cover removed.
I performed the encoder reset procedure and the single axis CALSET procedure. I was very happy to see the robot completing the programs I had already entered with near perfect precision to before. At most, there was a half mm deviation at the end of the arm which I think is to be expected. Robots in general are not meant to be particularly accurate in terms of positioning in the global absolute space, but they are exceptionally repeatable in moving to taught positions.
I wrote a simple 4 line program to cycle the J2 joint from end limit to end limit and let that cycle for several hours at 10% speed. The gearbox was initially very noisy but that settled down as the grease worked itself in. I may have overfilled the gearbox with grease a bit, but I left the bleed port open and it spat out a bit of excess. After 3 hours or so, I checked on it and the gearbox was nice and quiet, no grinding sounds.
The motion remains a bit jerky when J2 is contributing significantly to the motion, and I have a feeling that this is a function of the wear on the gearbox. A small amount of compliance in the gearbox amplifies both servo motor vibrations and bubbles/grease between teeth of the gearbox. View this 24" from the joint when the arm is fully outstretched and small arc-second/arc-minute sized vibrations become significant movements. This does not affect positioning accuracy and is not noticeable at anything above 25%. At the end of the day, this is a $40k machine that I picked up for $400 and it is only for hobby use, so whatever. I bet a gearbox swap would fix it if it really starts bothering me.
As I was messing around with the robot in manual jog mode late last night I kept hearing clicking from the J2 motor followed by erratic jerking of the joint and really nasty sounds. Didn't take me long to figure out that the J2 motor electromechanical brake was closing while the motor was running. I need to troubleshoot this, but I have a feeling it is from the 2 pin connector on the motor that I accidentally broke the retaining clip on. I have the connector taped shut, but I bet the contacts are making poor connection with all the mating cycles they just got. I have spare crimp contacts so I should pick up some connector bodies and replace the whole setup. I'm fairly confident the controller is still working OK since the J2 and J3 motors share the same circuit from the controller and the same conductor in the motor power cable, and J3 is working fine.
My order of connectors for the controller battery came in today from eBay. I had to buy a full lot since these are discontinued and no major electronics company (Digikey, Mouser, Newark, etc.) carries them. The crimp contacts are coming from Mouser in the $3 shipping option. They might show up next year. Amusingly, if I stick to replacing the battery every two years and I never reuse the connectors, I'll have enough to last me until 2084. If I'm still alive
(now that's a depressing thought!).