Study of tilt axis bearing arrangement for M3S of TMT project

The tertiary mirror positioned assembly (M3PA) of the thirty meters telescope (TMT) is the largest tertiary mirror pointing system in the world. The tracking and pointing performance of M3PA is better than any other telescopes which have been built, and the working condition is even worse, so the designers face an enormous challenge. The tracking system includes the bottom rotator shaft and the tilt shaft. The study of this paper focuses on the tilt shaft. There are mainly three forms. The first form is one end fixed with the other unrestrained in axial direction. The second form uses two pairs of angular contact ball bearing. The last form lays two tape roller bearings. All of them can meet the requirements when the M3PA is vertical. But the first one becomes invalid when the M3PA is horizontal. We pay our attention on the study for the second arrangement method.. This bearing arrangement can produce a good stiffness, and increase the first modal frequency to 15.1Hz. In addition, some analysis were down to study the load applied on the balls. The results show that the maximum load is up to 5000N with the stress of 2300MPa.