[Jon Jack]

When it comes to weight the AndyMarks do help.

Last year we milled out the gears in our Kit Transmission, all in all the Kit Transmission was about 1-2 lbs lighter. When we got our AndyMarks this year we took our Kit Transmission from our robot last year and weighed it against an AndyMark. The AndyMarks were about 5-7 lbs lighter.

We actually designed a 2-Speed that used helical gears instead of spur gears. Our intentions were to use it on our robot this year, but we ran out of time and bought 2 AndyMarks. I must say that the AndyMarks are, IMHO, easier to install and maintain than even the Kit Transmissions! They easily integrated with the rest of our robot and we didn't have to change a lot on our drive train.

With that said, making your own transmission is a very valuable experience for students. Even though I personally didn't design the transmission, I learned a lot by watching the transmission be designed. I had no clue what meshing gears was or what dog gears were, but by the time we started putting together the first prototype of our 2-Speed transmission I knew what the difference was between meshing gears and using dog gears. For the students, actually getting to see a transmission designed, built and used will be an awesome learning experience.

Even though the transmission we designed was not ready to be used on this years robot, we learned a lot from how the AndyMarks that we want to use to improve our transmission. There were somethings we didn't spend much time considering, like how to mount the gear box or how to save space by changing the placement of the output shaft.

The bottom line is that I would 100% recommend designing your own transmission, if you have the money and machining capabilities, but don't over look existing or off the shelf transmissions.