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Our Needs
Here is what we have been doing for the last four years: Go to Motion Industries for ALL our stuff. What we do is look online at primarily Berg, Martin Sprockets, and Boston Gear. Sometimes Stock Drive and PIC Design (0.7 module gears). They all have the specs and part numbers online. All of our standard bearings come from SKF and our slim large cross section bearings from KAYDON. We compile our list from each vendor and fax it to our local Motion Industries rep. It took the first year to get them used to us, but now I know our rep by name and he knows what I expect. They will look at all the gear companies to find the best price and get back to us with anyone who takes longer than a week. They are definitely the way to go.
About gear selection. 32 DP Stainless steel gears work fine for most drivetrain stuff. The only gears that really need to be regular steel are the output gears. My recommendation is 20 DP from Boston or Martin (very interchangeable) for the output.
2 things reduce the life of gears: Contact Stress and tooth bending. Very rarely to FIRST gears wear from contact stress (the even wear of a gear tooth until it is a razor blade). Most failures I have seen have been tooth bending. The 2 largest factors driving that are tooth size(Tooth Size goes up as DP goes down) and gear width (face width).
We never use brass (why? it is as heavy as steel .. well, very close) and use aluminum on the 1st stage of our gearbox. Stainless gears from Berg are very good for the rest of the gears except the output as I said above.
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