Thread: CIM-U-LATORS
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Unread 08-02-2011, 12:41
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Re: CIM-U-LATORS

Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamHeard View Post
Sorry for my words, but this is a load of crap.

You have a group of people interested in engineering and dedicated to a goal. If you guys can't sit down, and decide to learn how to make a simple spur gearbox with the tools you have available, stop competing, because you either have no competitive drive.

Making a single speed, speed reducing, torque increasing plain jane gearbox is a darn simple design exercise, and if a group of intelligent, passionate and motivated people can't do it, it's just a lack of wanting it bad enough. Doing one that can be "machined" by hand is a tad bit more difficult, but only marginally so. I know of several teams who have literally hand made gearboxes (we do it quite often prototyping...).

I don't mean to be cocky, as I'm no amazing designer, but I could knock out a N:1 single speed gearbox in thirty minutes or less in CAD, and a few minutes or less in conceptual design. This is true of many, many members on FIRST teams, many of which have no special skills and are just average people.
So if you guys are so great, why did you as a mentor for an 8 year old team order not one, not two, but 20 P60s? Surely you could have built your own gearboxes, probably with one hand behind your back and going uphill both ways.

My point still stands. FIRST distributes four motors, with no gearboxes, no pinions, and the supplier is 10 - 15 days behind. The build season isn't exactly the time to be experimenting at building a gearbox. Many teams will learn to build gearboxes in the future, and many have put forth some great workarounds, but for many younger teams and rookies, the banebot problem is a major headache.

You need to remember that not every team has engineering mentors. Not everyone team has access to lots of cash to experiment with. Even with those, not every team has access to the tools needed to build a gearbox. Even using CAD for many teams is a challenge.
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