Making your own gearbox?
 

:confused: My team is coming up on its third year as a FIRST robotics team, and i found myself thinking about how we could not use the simple drill motors to power our massive machine next year. looking at alot of robots this year at competition, i noticed that they are using their own gearboxes. All im asking for is a good reference on how to make your own gearbox. since my team doesnt have any engineering teams to back it up i was hoping to find out how we could do it on our own. thnx for your help.

Chaosmonkey.....

"You can take the monkey out of the chaos, but you cant take the chaos out of the monkey." - me

Send me an email and I will fill you in

matthew.reiland@gm.com

So bad this thread is in the motors forum, because very few people read it.
I'm also very interested in gear transmissions.
I looked for some in the nationals, and I liked the ones in teams 60 and 68.

I'll also send an e-mail to mathew :)

All i have to say is CCT!!

Crazy-Chicken Transmission!

I saw it at GLR, in peices and working, and it was awsome!

This is the frist year team 60 built gearboxes for this competition. We took some chances not knowing how we our design would work. They worked perfectly. In order to make boxes like these you will need the help of a machine shop. I have the drawings on CAD if anyone wants the files E-mail me at glenn@laron.com. I will send the info to you along sources for the materials.
Glenn

Re: Making your own gearbox?
 

Hold on a minute.... Do you mean to tell us that you use the drill motors with a 1-1 gear ratio with the drive wheels???? Please tell me you are not doing this?? That is CRAZY man!!!

CCT - Crazy Chicken transmission
 

Thanks for the compliment Matt.

The CCT is a continuously variable transmission that is not that difficult to implement. Like Glenn says, you will need someone with a machine shop to make the housing. I will be posting all the drawings, the parts list and the theory behind the CCT in the white papers section of this forum. The drawings will be in both AutoCad and SolidWorks format. Since all the components were designed in 3D using SolidWorks, I will also post the solid models and assemblies in SolidWorks 2001 format. I am hoping other teams can make the CCT work for them as it worked for us.

Glenn,

Maybe you could post your AutoCad drawings on the White papers section, also.

-Paul

Re: CCT - Crazy Chicken transmission
 

I will do that.

I was also impressed with the Chicken Tranny, I watched it put out some serious power when you guys had it all tuned in

I also like 60's very effective setup

To answer ChaosMonkey's original question. There are several resorces out there. Machinery's Handbook is one. For questions on basic design of gear boxes it is very useful. Also about how to do tons of other things too. It ain't cheap so see if you can find a used one. They never go out of date, even though they publish a new edition every year. I used to borrow a friend's but he went to another company so I guess I'll have to go find one myself

I am looking forward to seeing Glenn's and Paul's designs. From the descriptions I have seen here, Paul's is very like something we were going to do this year until we went to three wheel drive. It would have been on my list of "must see" items if I had been in Florida. I also liked 190's CVT. I designed a version of that last summer that I dropped because it was too complicated. 190 showed me a simpler way. I had 5 "idler wheels" instead of 190's 2 because I underestimated the friction factor.

45-Gearbox
 

Also stay tuned for a "white paper" similar to our "dual motor mounts from last year", but for the shift on the fly transmissions...

Hopefully Andy Baker decides to do this similar to last year (he's a busy man), but if he does look for it under the resources section at www.technokats.org or the white papers here. :)

A couple of issues
 

Clark... hey, it's not just up to me!

As for our transmission design and whether it will be published, there are a few issues:

1. The design is not as "clean" as the dual motor mount that is already published. Keep in mind that this gearbox was designed in about 4-5 days, after we all found out about the Chiapua motor addition to the kit. I would definitely have to put in some time to clean up some of the little errors and such to make it presentable.

2. Since this design was done in haste, 3 of the 7 gears involved in each of the 2 gearboxes were custom sized and had to be wire-EDMed. I don't feel really good about publishing a design that many teams won't be able to re-create. When I take the time to go in an clean up the designs, I will try to find some standard gears to replace the custom ones... this may change the ratios a bit, but not too much.

3. We still need to make a "team decision" on if, when and how to publish this. I'd really like to make a "design handbook" which not only has this design in it, but also the dual motor mount, and possibly some other things.

I'd bet that this will be published... I'm just not sure when it's gonna happen. It may be a month or two before it happens.

What I REALLY like seeing is that other teams are finally stepping up to the plate and beginning to publish designs for other teams to use. We went out on a limb two years ago and published detailed mechanical designs for other teams to use and now other teams are joining in. Kudos to Paul (217) and Glenn (60) for providing engineering support to the FIRST community.

Andy B.

looking for something good
 

Our team has become proficent at building custom gearboxes and wheels, but we have yet to establish a variable speed tranny. I have seen many good examples out there, but I am looking for a very reliable system that really never needs to be fixed. Our drill gearboxes frim last year still haven't had any work done on them and we drive um hard.

We used similar ones this year along with similar chipua ones, ANd never had a single problem, besides being a little slow. I respected many of the variable tranies i saw, one of my favorites being 322. Does anyone have a good, simple, no pneumatic, design for a shift in the fly 2 or preferably 3 speed transmission.


P.S. Techno Cats, I really wanna see detailed drawings of your transmission, it looks amazing, and i love your track drive this year.

Dual Motor Gearbox
 

Team 716, the Who’sCTEKs would like to share our 2002 dual motor gearbox design. I have submitted it to the White Papers today.

We made it through our rookie year due to the generosity of Team 157, the Aztech's, and Mike Faticanti who shared with us their motor mounts and gave excellent advice on the drill motors.

This past year we discovered this forum and so thanks also go to Joe Johnson and to Team 45, the Technokats for their white papers on motor mounts and drill motor advice. Thanks also to ChiefDelphi for sponsoring this forum.

This design started as a combination of Team 157's and Team 45's designs and was changed to a dual motor setup when we saw the Atwood's. The drawings are in AutoCAD R14.

We are posting this for other teams to use and modify for their robots.

Re: Dual Motor Gearbox
 

!!!!!!!

This is excellent! This was our whole point with publishing our designs. Now, the flood gates are beginning to open and we are starting to see more designs published.

Way to go, Andy Brockway and the rest of team 716!!

These guys sure "get it". They come in here to the FIRST competition, make some neat designs, compete, and then are gracious enough to publish them for all of us to see.

This is very inspiring, for sure.

Andy B.