Abstract
Lubrication is one of the most important key technologies for the reliability and long life of space mechanisms. Solid lubricants, which are pre-coated on the earth by a certain amount thickness, are commonly used as present lubrication. Therefore, the life of the lubricant is determined by its wear. To extend the lifetime, a new lubrication method for on-demand and in-situ restoration of the lubricants called as "Tribo-coating" had been introduced, and its effectiveness as practical solid lubrication method has been clearly shown. The ultimate objective of this series of studies is to develop a self-restored lubrication system with the Tribo-coating. In this paper, the world smallest evaporation source of tribo-coating for self-restored lubrication system was developed. The power needed for evaporation of the solid lubricant with the developed MES was 560mW. And sufficiently low for practical use friction coefficient of 0.005 was obtained with ball bearing coated by Tribo-coating with the developed MES.
