pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

If you had a Dog gear with more teeth, like 6 (guessing by the gear on the far left). then the 4.5 lbs of force that the mini cylinder you posted might have enough force to shift a transmission. I bet those gears don't weigh much at all, but if they weigh less then that chain in your drive-train then there might be an advantage to using them.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

Believe it or not, these 30 gears come to a total of .99 lbs! That's equivalent to just two 50T 20DP.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

What is the PA and DP of those gears?

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

14.5 PA, 16 and 20 DP.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

I love the gear with the matching window motor pattern. How many gears will you be stacking together per assembly? (If any)

Really cool stuff, can't wait to see the big reveal.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

Cool so did yall use a gear generator to get the gear pattern?

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

We're stacking two per "gear" for all places these are used.

I actually used the formulas out of the Machinery Handbook to generate the curves. In hindsight, we made gears with teeth that were way too detailed. The specific waterjet our sponsor uses hesitates slightly before moving to each new curve, so the teeth had much more material blown out than if we had used a simpler tooth model (which would technically be less accurate, but would survive the cutting process better). We learned our lesson for next time here, but even with that flaw the gears still roll smooth on each other.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

I have a feeling these are part of one of the coolest and lightest two speed gearboxes ever seen. Possibly as low as one pound flat.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

I think I've got it.

Taking a leaf out of 25's 2006 gear-drive locking drivetrain, are you?

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

Believe thats not what they are for :p

-RC

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

Stacked together, these would make 2, 3 or 5 gears of each type. So my guess is that these gears will help 973 add 1-2 window motors to their shoulder joint that assists with anti-backdrive of their arm. Yet I dunno how that would affect their PID when doing 'over the shoulder' scoring (pick up from the front, rotate the arm and score at the back).

Their render from earlier this year:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/36953

At first I thought the middle gear would be used for a dog gear coupling where the dog gear only has 2 possible coupling positions (180 degrees from each other), yet that setup would shear the bolts/rivets holding the plate gears together. It's an interesting design for a solid steel gear though.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

Good guesses, but our arm this year was so ridiculously overpowered that PID wasn't even needed to hold position, friction did it well enough. We did have PID of course, it just wasn't what actually held the arm up.

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

What features of the gear tooth profile would you say were too complex/detailed/unnecessary? What features were essential, in your opinion? And lastly, would it make much of a difference to the tooth surface if cut on a laser as opposed to a waterjet?

Thanks!

Re: pic: FRC973 offseason teaser #2
 

It's not so much what is essential/non-essential, it's more about how much detail is needed; it's the same feature either way (the tooth profile). The gear tooth profile is not just a simple arc, it's a changing curve. You can approximate it as less curves and still get reasonable accuracy (which you'll notice a lot of people/companies have done on their CAD models). I also imagine different machines might not get "confused" by the new curve.

If you google some about how to draw spur gears, you'll see what I mean and it will make total sense.

I can't make the blanket statement about water versus laser, just that the run of lasered parts we did this year that were .125 thick had a much cleaner and smoother edge than this run of waterjetted parts. I did tell the waterjetter to cut everything very fast though (to test if we get the same functionality out of less sponsor time), not sure how valid of a comparison that is. There are an awful lot of machines on the market as well, combined with the fact that machine settings can also have a huge effect on finish.