Ok, there is a lot for me to cover here
First off, please lubricate your gears, and put some sort of cover on the gearbox so the gears don't get covered in debris. Your efficiency is already going to be really low using a two start worm and no lubrication isn't going to help.
I have to agree with many who've already stated this, you are at risk of snapping the worm gear teeth. You have the benefit of using a bigger pitch gear than we did (16 Pitch right? or metric?) but you'll also using a smaller diameter gear and bigger wheels. The gear teeth snapping was one of our main concerns and we would never have used worm gears if they didn't back drive.
As for getting the worm gear in a harder material the only other material that they're made in is cast iron and while thats harder it's also brittle and won't help at all with the teeth snapping issue.
One other comment on the design, you're going to want thrust bearings on both sides of the worm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelBick
From what I've heard they weren't backdriveable until the gears wore in, and they had no problems.
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Our Gearboxes were always back drivable, we could always push the robot around but it just wouldn't roll by itself early in the season. By champs we could push it and it would roll just like it would if it had a standard gearbox.
We never had any problems with the worm gearboxes, we didn't have to touch them the whole season...or after.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavisDad
Do you have advice on where to source gears? I've only found expensive sets for industrial fabrication and very cheap hobby gears.
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Our worm gears were Boston gear gears's purchased through Motion Industries. Gears with the same specks are available from SDP-SI.
Boston Gear bevel gears are also available through Motion Industries but i would suggest getting Martin Sprocket and Gear gears instead. Martin bevel gears are case hardened and will last longer than the Boston gear ones.
The bevel gears on Mcmaster-carr are Martin but they have a limited selection so we bought ours through Motion Industries.
But yeah they're all pretty expensive...