Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
I'm not trying to denigrate what 192 did last year, because they made a gorgeous, highly functional gearbox, but it should also be asked "what advantage does 192's gearbox design hold over a COTS or modified COTS solution?"
Moving the motors out of the way isn't a good enough reason for most teams, IMO. What is all that extra work and potential compromise of reliability really buying you? An extra 8" in the interior of your robot that you probably don't really need anyways?
192 had the benefit of doing something similar (with worm gears) to OP's design in 2012. They didn't do it again after that. They have at least 4 revs of their 2014 gearbox (as I recall they made 2 prototypes in the 2012 offseason, plus the 2013 gearbox, then the 2014 gearbox).
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For 192 I don't think the performance and space saving benefit of custom dt gearboxes is of much importance (it's mostly motivation and gives direction). The main benefit is the experience the students get when designing it. I think you learn a lot more from designing something like the DT than you do a lot of the other mechanisms of the robot. You have a lot more time to go through every detail and really think about how it's going to work and make every improvement possible. The skills our drive train team gain are also used in the rest of the robot resulting in a overall better robot.
I think the OP should, at the very least, make one gearbox as a prototype to test the design. He'll learn a lot more from seeing how his design performs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by asid61
While 192 made several revisions, it is relatively easy to copy their design because they've done all the hard work in the basic design. The hardest part of a design IMO is coming up with the overall design first. After that, it all falls into place in CAD.
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IDK I think the hard bit is making it all work and figuring out all the tiny details
