pic: Iron Lions WCD Gearbox
 

Re: pic: Iron Lions WCD Gearbox
 

Looks really good! You might be able to gear higher, but it's preference really.
You can decrease the C-C disatnce of the gears by 0.002" if you wanted to. It only needs to be like +0.001" or apparently +0.000".
I really like the encoder placement.
I really like how you've incorporateed the first stage of gearing to offset the extra thickness added by using dog shifting.
Side plates can be 3/16" thick I think, but I'm not 100% sure if that's okay in thsi situation.

Re: pic: Iron Lions WCD Gearbox
 

.003 is recommended by WCP for 2 or more stage gearboxes. 973 has tried no adder and wore the gears in, but they said that it was not worth the work. The benefit of wearing gears in is that they should have longer life(not an issue for FRC run times)

Re: pic: Iron Lions WCD Gearbox
 

I see. I run +0.002" on my boxes, but I've been thinking about moving to +0.001". Gears are supposed to account for MFG tolerances anyway, but I don't know how much room the WCP and Vex gears allot for that.
Come to think of it, now that I have a mill, I can make as many gearboxes as I want... I might try a few different configurations then and see what happens.

Re: pic: Iron Lions WCD Gearbox
 

How is it extra work to reduce the added spacing? Does 973 need to remove shavings from the gearbox?