Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
I could go into gear design itself, but that's pretty ugly, or gets that way after a little while. Shaft design might be more helpful, but that's one where I'd just use COTS shafts rather than deal with squares inside of square roots inside a cube root.
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This kind of attitude is unhelpful. It does no good to say, "Look at this really complicated formula I know!" and then not even explain it. Furthermore, for 99% of FRC applications there is no need to do really crazy math, just a serious need to understand core concepts.
This thread is a really great place to start, and
this post by Adam Heard is really good. As Adam suggests, I think you are much better off starting by doing a simple custom gearbox that consists of all off the shelf pieces except for the sideplates and working your way up. There is a huge wealth of information on Chiefdelphi, and don't be afraid to ask technical questions. 1 simple technical question is worth 100 "Is XXXX better than YYYY even though OPR says otherwise?!" threads.
Making gears is probably worth a separate thread. It has definitely been done. If you have access to some type of CNC machine you can waterjet/mill/route/lasercut larger gears that
don't move quite so fast, but typically the smaller gears you'd find in a gearbox are hobbed, and that requires special tooling. It is much easier to call up a supplier, but if you dead set on making your own gears I'm sure someone on CD has done it.
Hope that helps get you started!