[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

This point I will grant you, however I would think you would want to consider using bevel gears instead of worm gears. While back-drive resistance is nice, worm-gear efficiency can be as low as 50%, compared to bevel and/or spur gear efficiency of 93%-98%. Back-drive resistance can always be accomplished with brake-mode on your speed controllers.

Also, in situations where you expect significant stress (like a drive train involved in robot-robot pushing matches, or sudden shocks from big impacts), it's actually preferable to have some give in the system. If something is going to give, I would prefer my motors to back-drive rather than breaking a gear. back-driving the motors does no harm, while breaking a gear ruins the rest of that match and forces a repair afterwards.