[Doug G]

We broke a tooth on a 32 dp stainless gear last year at nats. We should have increased the dp of the last stage of the gearbox. See attached pics.

It had a ratio of 200:1 if I remember right, most of the gears were 1/4" face and rode on a 1/4" keyed shaft. 1/4" keyed shaft? Is there such a thing? Yep, we made it using a 1/16" end mill. The transmission was used to operate our arm and worked well, even when the tooth broke on the one gear. However after some more use since then the bearings starting falling out of the transmission housing which was only 1/8" thick Al (that old 2x4 stuff they gave in 03 & 04).

Now we're building a much stronger arm transmission using a worm gear (12 dp), 20 dp gears, 1/2" shafts, and two CIM's housed in a 1/4" thick Al housing. Too bad it will weigh 10 x as much as the old one - but it's just for fun.