Best Gear Ratio?
 

We are a rookie team looking for a little feedback on a design issue we are having with our robot. We know we need our gearboxes to deliver us little torque with good acceleration but we aren't sure on the correct gear ratio we should use with our Tough Boxes. There are two optional ratios we can use without custom designing new gears to fit our output shaft (5.95:1 and 8.45:1) and we were wondering if anyone had feedback on a similar problem or could give us a helpful suggestion to fix our problem. Thank you!

Re: Best Gear Ratio?
 

Please don't bump your own threads an hour after creation with nothing more than "bump" written. Many here would be glad to help you out and just haven't gotten around to looking at your thread yet.

If I were you I would go with the 5.95:1 ratio. It will provide you with the least torque while using the tough boxes. While this is still too much, you can fix it enough in the programming if you are using the 5.95:1 option.

I'm not sure of your machining capabilities but have you considered making your own gearboxes? It's not too hard to make a simple one with a decent mill. You could do a ratio of 12:50 with the CIM gear going right to the output gear ( a 4.167:1 ratio)

You might also want to use a larger sprocket on the shaft of the gearbox to get a lower ratio (with the 5.95:1 option of course).

-Vivek

Re: Best Gear Ratio?
 

At the moment, I don't believe we have any kind of machining available. I'm pretty sure our school doesn't, and as of yet we don't have any sponsors that can donate the necessary facilities. We may have those soon though.

Re: Best Gear Ratio?
 

Don't feel bad. We have a hacksaw, drill press, screwdrivers and wrenches. However, any gear ratio in the transmission can be adjusted by the time it gets to the wheels by changing the size of the drive sprockets. As to what is the best ratio, I have never driven a bot on a slick suface, so there I am no help.:)