You guys are good.
A version of this idea was proposed to me from mentor Mike Koch from team 1720 in Muncie, in mid-November. I took a week or two to make a nice design, then got parts quoted and sourced. We are finishing up the build on a production run of these gearboxes. Mike does not know this, but his team will get a couple of these for free.
(by the way... this is one of the things I LOOOOOOVE about being a small business: you can act quickly on an idea)
It's not a gearbox that will be in the 08 Kit of Parts. Even so, it's a neat-o gearbox. I'll explain:
Gearbox type: spur gear reduction, one stage
Gearbox Size: 5" x 3" x 1" wide
Reduction: 3.57:1 (14 tooth gear driving a 50 tooth gear)
Shafts (input & output, identical): 3/8" dia w/ 3/32 keyway, sticking out 1" from side of gearbox
Gears: 20 dp, 14.5 pa steel gears w/ ~ 3/8" face width
No motor mounts.
To use this gearbox, you would connect something (sprocket, hub, pulley) to the input shaft (3/8" dia) and drive it. You would then get a 3.57:1 reduction out the output shaft.
The cool thing is... and here's where it gets its name... you can stack 2-3-4-5 of these things back to back and keep multiplying a 3.57:1 ratio to your output shaft. These are a large, spur gear version of what Chuck (deepwater) posted above.
And... another thing (and this will take a bit longer), we can vary the reduction inside the gearbox by replacing the two gears with any two of the same dp and pa, as long as the teeth add up to 64. We're working on other ratios, but for now the only one that will be available by the end of the year is the 50:14 ratio.
Yes, Andy B and Scott (indysam).... put two of these on top of each other, and you have a nice reduction for an arm.
I'll post some CAD pics on the site tomorrow. I suppose that we better assign a price to this thing too. Where's that dartboard?
There are many new little parts coming out within the next few weeks. Good find, Burchardt.
Andy Baker