[EricH]

Originally Posted by IKE

Absolutely, I can't believe I forgot to add "lightening" steel gears. For those that are not familiar, you can either cut pockets with a mill, or undercut the gear between the teeth and the hub on a lathe (this is what we usually do). When doing this, make sure to leave a littl material underneath the root of the gear tooth as this can be a highly stressed location on a gear. Also leave material for the hub as this is either the torque transferring area, or has the bearings on an idler gear. We can often cut about 50% of the weight out of the standard AndyMark gears.

Just be careful how you "cuck up" the gears in a lathe so you do not damage the teeth.

You can do the same thing with sprockets. Just be careful, for the same reasons. A couple of large sprockets have failed catastrophically in competitions after being lightweighted. I remember or remember hearing about two incidents from 2004--in one case, the sprocket turned into a pretzel; in the other, the hub broke free after the season, disabling that particular robot by removing one of its highest-traction wheels from the drivetrain.