[Peter Matteson]

In the case of off the shelf worm gear transmission, aka speed reducers, a COTS part is much heavier than a custom one. My experience with these is that they designed for heavy machinery and not the applications that we have.

One of the best off the shelf transmission choices 177 has made in the last few years was to get the trailer jack the chip was designed for and use that to power our shoulder in 2003. There are lots of good Commercial Off The Shelf parts if you know where to look.