Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325227)

You can simply remove the input gear for the high speed gear stage. That is the easiest way.

We are testing this now to see the max loading the ball shifter can still shift into neutral. My theoretical calculation indicates in excess of 400 lbs in a 2" diameter winch.

Originally Posted by mrnoble (Post 1325259)

Paul, I can't tell you how relieved we are to see you answering this question.

My students tell me that taking the high gear input results in no interface with the CIM. We will test your suggestion and see if we can figure out how to make this work. Let us know what you come up with too, if you get a chance.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325289)

Let me be clear (with pictures). There are two versions of the Ball Shifter: last year's 2 CIM version and this year's 3 CIM. Your students are correct for the 3 CIM, but you do not need the 3 CIM version for this activity. The reason is the 3 CIM Ball Shifter design changes(besides adding another CIM) were specifically for use in a WCD drive base and to increase the amount of spreads available.

For the neutral application none of this matters and a 2 CIM is fine.

Attached are the 2 cross sections

The 2 CIM. As you can see, I removed the high speed input gear and you have a neutral.

The 3 CIM. As you can see, if you remove the high speed cluster, then you will have no CIM motor input. You have 3 choices: (1) remove the low speed cluster, (2) remove the high speed ball gear, or (3) remove the balls from the high speed part of the ball shifter output. Personally, I would remove the balls as putting the shaft together is easy IF you have snap ring pliers.

With all that said, I would just use the 2 CIM shifter.

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325358)

Look at the edited post.

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325289)

Your students are correct. It has been a long week.

Attached are the 2 cross sections:


The 2 and 3 CIM. As you can see, if you remove the high speed cluster, then you will have no CIM motor input. You have 3 choices: (1) remove the low speed cluster, (2) remove the high speed ball gear, or (3) remove the balls from the high speed part of the ball shifter output. Personally, I would remove the balls as putting the shaft together is easy IF you have snap ring pliers.

Originally Posted by TheFrozenSlink (Post 1325701)

Wow thank you very much, for the response, and participating in BuildBlitz , it really helped our team, and many others, to get a good start to this season.

On a slightly unrelated side note, would you know when are the shifters going to actually ship? We ordered them the same weekend of the new product launch (they said they would ship before kickoff) , and when we asked Vex customer support they tell us they will ship tomorrow. This would be alright, if they hadn't been telling us that for the past week and a half, every time we ask :confused: , is this happening with many teams or is it ours?

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325717)

Yeah, sorry about that. We had an inventory snafu here in Greenville, but all of the shifter components should be in stock this week and they will definitely ship in time for the weekend. I will have to check on Monday when I am in the office.

Paul

Originally Posted by holygrail (Post 1326084)

We spent some time this weekend working on modifying the ball shifter to use as a winch. We removed the three balls from the high gear and it seems to work well as a neutral gear since it can no longer engage the high gear. Thanks for the advice on this thread on how to do it. It wasn't as hard as I expected and it was cool for the students to see the inner workings of the gearbox.

One question though. It seems like there is quite a bit of natural resistance in the gearbox even when it is in neutral. We haven't hooked it up to a winch under tension yet, but it seems like it might slow things down quite a bit even when it does kick into neutral gear.

Is the tension on a bungee powered catapult enough to overcome that resistance and still get a powerful, consistent shot?

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325717)

Yeah, sorry about that. We had an inventory snafu here in Greenville, but all of the shifter components should be in stock this week and they will definitely ship in time for the weekend. I will have to check on Monday when I am in the office.

Paul

Originally Posted by Answer42 (Post 1324841)

Did you order 3 cim ball shifters just for this task? Seems kinda overkill to me.

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296 (Post 1326105)

"Over-kill is under-rated"

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli (Post 1325227)

You can simply remove the input gear for the high speed gear stage. That is the easiest way.

We are testing this now to see the max loading the ball shifter can still shift into neutral. My theoretical calculation indicates in excess of 400 lbs in a 2" diameter winch.