Chief Delphi - View Single Post - Banebot 56mm gearbox - double D

ZZII 527 · #14 04-02-2007, 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkorobotics

Our team is also using these 56mm gearboxes. Now I have been reading through the forums and I am scared now! I am afraid these gearboxes will fail. We have signs of the gearbox binding or jamming. What is the best and simplest way to prevent this?

I am afraid that it may break like the images people have posted. What can I do to prevent this? From what I soaked up from previous posts is add lubricant, support the CIM, and break them in.

Also I found gear dust, very small amounts of metal inside the gearbox. What should I do?

Now I heard harding this plate may prevent the problem of the double D breaking. The problem is we don't know how to harden the plates, and I doubt we have the time. Also if these gearboxes fail, we don't have the money to replace them. So what should we do?

All of the things you mentioned (lubricant, breaking in, supporting the CIM) are helpful. I'm guessing you are using just one CIM in each gearbox. The data and evidence so far suggests that if you treat this setup right, it will quite possibly survive without modification. Joe Johnson and BaneBots are working on a solution for making harder carrier plates that doesn't involve the teams doing heat treating themselves.

I can tell you from my own experiences (we are also running 12:1, 1 CIM per gearbox) that if you notice binding and the gearbox gets hot while breaking it in for a half hour, you may want to take it apart an look for tight spots. This will give you a chance to look at the carrier plate too for any signs of wear and add lubricant. There are instructions available from the BaneBots website for how to relieve common problems, such as the motor pinion sticking out too far.

Another fix that seemed to help yesterday was sanding (with fine grit) and/or polishing the round lip on the bearing blocks that fits into the ring gear housing and the flat surface opposite the carrier plate on the bearing block. This seemed to help with alignment issues, and the motor current went down by half an amp or more.