pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

It looks like you added in an extra gear, bearing, and shaft in order to make this viable. Do you think there's a way to keep the two-shaft design like this? I can't really think of one.
With that i mind, I think I prefer your last gearbox a bit more.
EDIT: Yeah, not a lot you can do without switching to belt combination it looks like.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

On the idler gear, you can make that a bearing bore gear instead of a hex bore and make the shaft dead instead of live so it acts like another standoff.

How/where are you mounting the shifting piston?

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

I was a little worried about this. I planned on this being a trade off between height and weight. Surprisingly, because the gears are smaller, and the plates are more compact, this version only weighs 0.05lbs more than the previous.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

I could do that, but I think it's unnecessary, and it would require modifying the gear.
It is mounted to an aluminum plate that is stood off of the back of the gearbox, in-between the CIMs. I could post a picture if your interested.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

You can buy bearing bore gears? No need to modify the hex ones.

If you still wanna use hex gears you can get some .250" ID x .500" OD Bearings.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

That's crazy good!
On dead axles, they do sell bearing bore gears, and it looks like you have something like a 48t or 50t gear on there. That would probably bump the weight to lower than what you had before.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

It's a 40 tooth gear. I guess I'm not seeing how a dead axle design would add useful strength or shed weight. I might give it a try anyway though, because I could be wrong.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

While it seems convenient to use the CIMs as the nuts that hold the standoff through bolts on, having your gearbox fall apart when the CIMs are removed probably isn't a good idea. Converting that idler shaft to a standoff would help remedy this and save the weight of a bearing.

Also, if you are going for flat try for one where all the CIMs are in a line (or nearly so) recent 341 and 254 gearboxes come to mind.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

If it's 40 tooth then you would have to modify, unfortunately.
You should reconsider the cim removal issue with the through bolts. Making heavy motors part of the frame is really awkward for assembly. Harder to put them in place, in addition to the regular mounting problems.
Maybe just making one of the cims have a different mounting hole pattern would work.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

This. A thousand times this. This is my biggest issue with the WCP single-speed gearboxes; it's incredibly annoying.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

I'm not following here, the issue with Bryce's gearbox is that all 5 standoffs mount to CIMs so you can't keep the gearbox together without motors. The WCP gearboxes use two bottom bolts and 2 integrated into the CIM so it doesn't have this issue.

We normally do this (not our robot) and put in CIM's later. You had the gearbox fall apart in a similar WCD setup?

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

If you use the bottom two standoff bolts to mount to the frame (non-WCD designs, such as a modified AM14U, are not necessarily compatible with the through-tube bearing block), then taking the gearbox off of the robot and taking the CIMs off of the gearbox does, indeed, cause the gearbox to fall apart.

Past that, simply removing the bolts to the CIMs with the gearbox still on the robot causes the spacers to fall out, which can be a massive pain if they're not in an easy-to-reach spot.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

Out of curiosity:

Why is doing this useful?
Why couldn't you do this with the gearbox design that I posted?

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

Gotcha,

Wasn't thinking of a non-wcd case. We normally leave the bolts in the same spot and that keeps the spacers there, but this again is a WCD case.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

We like the ability to do that so we can add CIMs in later/makes wiring a little easier without CIMs in the way. Also much much lighter without the CIMs in so its easier to handle etc..

The reason why I'm not a huge fan of using all bolts connected to CIMs is during assembly you either:

a) Have to assemble with CIMs to hold the gearbox together or
b) Put it together and put nuts in the back, then when putting in CIMs having to take each nut off.

Nothing crazy revolutionary but could make your life easier.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

That makes sense. I agree that it would be a slight inconvenience. Although I like the idea of using the CIMs as standoff nuts because most of the forces on the back plate come from the CIM mounts, and because it lightens things.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

It would be a pretty big inconvenience IMO. Gearbox assembly is already hard enough, as I learned last week.
It doesn't hurt that much to add different mounting holes for the cims. Plus, then you can use a system like what 192 used to tension gearbox belts this year to allow for different pinions to be mounted.

We tried assembling WCP gearboxes. It took us around five hours to assemble two gearboxes due to some unforseen issues. It's a great gearbox design for teams with little manufacturing resources. But some parts, like the sping washers, are really annoying to work with if you have enough machining resources to make it fit properly.
Also, R.C, if you are reading this, there was a slight error in the instuction manual. A 1/32" spacer is explicitly stated to be a 1/16" spacer in the instuctions. Not sure if that's our problem or something wrong with the manual.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

Assembly should take around 20-30 minutes a gearbox, we used 4 3 CIM WCD gearboxes this year.

I'm not a fan of the spring wave either, it'll be replaced out to a solid washer in the future here soon...

I'll take a look and your more than welcome to email me here. Please email me what gearbox you were using and which manual etc.. That way we can take care of the typo.

Thanks

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

In the future I'm sure we could do it faster. First time is the hardest, I think.
I will shoot you an email just as soon as my team has its next meeting.

Re: pic: 3 CIM WCD Ball Shifter Second Edition
 

As others have mentioned, bearing bore gears and shoulder bolts will save you some weight and bearings. You can even bore out a smaller gear to accept smaller OD bearings.

It is non-trivial to ensure that the idler gears mesh with both pinions and the large cluster gear at the same time. While the outer CIMs can freely rotate, the middle CIM meshing with both idler gears will lock their orientation relative to each other, and if this combined orientation does not line up with the large cluster gear, the gearbox will not work. It is a lot less elegant to do it this way, but two motors on one idler and one motor on the other idler would be a bit safer and more tolerant of misalignment.

about the above - sorry, misunderstood gearbox initially. I see the gears on the right idler gear now, for some reason I thought another shaft was buried in there. In this case, I would just like to comment on the use of a 12T CIM pinion as an idler - this may not work well particularly if the pinion is aluminum. A lot of force going through a tiny gear. That's not to say it's impossible or not doable, just be careful.

Personally I like this design a lot better than the previous revision. The extra gear is a thing, yes, but the design is more symmetrical, compact, and in many ways simpler. Just seems more elegant to me.