Polycarbonate side plates for lighter gearboxes

[Chris is me]

Thanks for correcting my misconceptions - I've removed the inaccuracy from my post. Now that I think of it, 2791's only assembled three or four regular Toughboxes, ever...

[pmangels17]

We usually use .125" aluminum for plates, not .250". seems to hold up fine. sometimes, we use 4"x2" tubes, or any size applicable. Even that is usually .125". The max we go is 3/16" for really high power stuff. We reserve 1/4" plates for the highest stress applications. We dont have a single piece of 1/4" on the bot this year. Drives are .125" plates, the rest are 2"x2"x1/8" tube with lots of excess milled out. Hope this helps. Good luck!

[Gray Adams]

We have a gearbox this year that is one side 1/4" delrin, other side 1/4" aluminum. We pocketed the aluminum plate out and it weighed almost the same as the delrin. It really doesn't seem to be any better not to use aluminum, and the aluminum looks a whole lot nicer after bead blasting and anodizing. In fact, the delrin was a little bit warpet because it was such a large piece (9"x 6" I believe). We only used delrin because we mounted Banebot 775s to it and that way we didn't have to worry about the cases shorting to the frame.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by Gray Adams

We have a gearbox this year that is one side 1/4" delrin, other side 1/4" aluminum. We pocketed the aluminum plate out and it weighed almost the same as the delrin. It really doesn't seem to be any better not to use aluminum, and the aluminum looks a whole lot nicer after bead blasting and anodizing. In fact, the delrin was a little bit warpet because it was such a large piece (9"x 6" I believe). We only used delrin because we mounted Banebot 775s to it and that way we didn't have to worry about the cases shorting to the frame.

Please do not do this. It WILL NOT SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS. The case will still short, just through the metal gears instead. You most likely got lucky with your 775s

[Hawiian Cadder]

Originally Posted by MICHAELABICK

Please do not do this. It WILL NOT SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS. The case will still short, just through the metal gears instead. You most likely got lucky with your 775s

You could use Plastic gears out of a FP Gearbox to help with that.

[MichaelBick]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

You could use Plastic gears out of a FP Gearbox to help with that.

Could definitely work. Also, you could try sourcing gears from sdp-si.

[MrForbes]

we made our own mechanism gearboxes using older FP plastic gears and polycarbonate side plates. Very easy to make with minimal shop equipment....

We haven't found any reason to try to reduce weight on the drivetrain gearboxes, we'd rather take the weight out of the higherer-up mounted parts.

Don't use thread locker with any polycarbonate parts

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by squirrel

we made our own mechanism gearboxes using older FP plastic gears and polycarbonate side plates. Very easy to make with minimal shop equipment....

Mr. Forbes' post made me want to note something, when using smaller motors like 500-series, 700-series, etc, you can get away with using Polycarb, Delrin or other strong plastic Side-plates depending on the application. On my former team, all of the aux boxes for their 2012 robot have Delrin side plates and are holding up just fine.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by Hawiian Cadder

You could use Plastic gears out of a FP Gearbox to help with that.

Yup

[DampRobot]

I for one would reccomend against this. In 2008, we tried polycarb side plates for our drive gearboxes. The plastic insulated the motors, and caused significant overheating problems. In 2010, we tried using the plastic toughbox plates. Same thing.

In my experience, plastic plates are a bad idea. Anyway, as mentioned above, there are other ways to save more weight more easily.

[Gray Adams]

Originally Posted by MICHAELABICK

Please do not do this. It WILL NOT SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS. The case will still short, just through the metal gears instead. You most likely got lucky with your 775s

We also had plastic inserts so that it wouldn't short through the gears, which is an important detail if you try this, but I was really just thinking about the delrin vs aluminum.