designing a three motor gearbox

[42!]

Designing a gearbox is a wonderful engineering exercise. In fact it's one I use when I want to teach someone the basics of FRC design. To start off, it is never completely sure what motors we will be allowed next year, however the combination you listed would be legal for the 2013 game year. As far as gearbox design, the best tool in the world is jvn design calculator. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2755
If you're smart you'll most likely figure it out quickly. Among other things this table can show the expected robot speed based on your gearing motors and wheel size. The easiest way to do this is to pick a wheel size, the pick gears from either of these sites http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexpro/ge...pro-gears.html and http://wcproducts.net/gears-20-dp/
Both of these have high quality aluminium gears which work well in robot drive trains. As far as what final speed you should aim for. most single speed transmissions are are 12-14 fp/s. Once you've figured what gears you want you can use these tools
http://wcproducts.net/how-to-gears/
To figure out how far apart your gears have to be to mesh correctly. This will allow you to figure out where you need bearing holes on your gearbox plate. After this you would draw up your gearbox plates, shafts to hold the gears as they spin and import cads of the gears (these are available from both vex-pro and WCP in the cad section of their site). Then you simply constrain everything together. This is obviously a simplification of the process of gearbox design, but feel free to ask any questions on here if you don't understand something. Also one more link to a helpful article on the subject.
http://www.frc-designs.com/btd/roboticstutorial1.html
Happy cadding!

[1683cadder]

Is there a list of formulas? I know there are calculators, but I want to know formulas. I wouldn't make custom gears for FIRST but for BEST we sometimes make gears with jigsaws.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by 1683cadder

Is there a list of formulas? I know there are calculators, but I want to know formulas. I wouldn't make custom gears for FIRST but for BEST we sometimes make gears with jigsaws.

Ahh, geartrain formulas. A really nice resource that I use is my college-level engineering textbook on Machine Design. To understand the WHY of those formulas without calculus is roughly equivalent to being very lost without a map of the area. To use them without calculus, OTOH, is actually possible.

The good news is that if you're just calculating a gearbox ratio, you just need to know the intermediate ratios. Let's take a single-speed gearbox--oh, let's grab a pair of AM Stackerboxes just for grins. As simple as it gets... one input gear, one output gear. 3.57:1 ratio (from here on out expressed as 3.57/1). Take two in series, and you get (3.57/1) * (3.57/1)= 12.7449/1.

Now, that formula (ratio 1*ratio 2=gearbox ratio) is expandable to any number of intermediate stages.

What that ratio does: It multiplies torque at the expense of a divided speed. Using the stacked Stackerboxes with a single CIM, running unloaded, you end up with 5500 RPM/12.7449=431.5 RPM at the output--but your torque went up by the same factor. If you had a 1:X gearbox, where X>1, it would have a reverse effect, speeding up the motor at the expense of torque.

Most folks who design custom FRC gearboxes will space the holes using the gears' pitch diameter (where they mesh with other gears)--take the sum of the pitch radii, add about 0.003", and usually that works.


I could go into gear design itself, but that's pretty ugly, or gets that way after a little while. Shaft design might be more helpful, but that's one where I'd just use COTS shafts rather than deal with squares inside of square roots inside a cube root.


Going on to some of your other questions:

Sure, you can test the gearbox in CAD. Do I know exactly how? No, due to not playing around with the motion constraints and other similar stuff, but I'm willing to bet there's a tutorial or someone can help you.

Can you use it next season if you guys publish the CAD? I'll let you know on January 4, 2014, but under the 2013 rules, that would be a Gray Area governed by R16. The CAD would be publicly available, but the gearbox would not be. Whether CAD counts the same as software is up for debate. But if you were to make changes to the gearbox design, and build a new one, you'd be quite legal. (My personal opinion, not valid at inspection, is that it would not be legal without the modifications--second example in the blue box.)

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by EricH

I could go into gear design itself, but that's pretty ugly, or gets that way after a little while. Shaft design might be more helpful, but that's one where I'd just use COTS shafts rather than deal with squares inside of square roots inside a cube root.

This kind of attitude is unhelpful. It does no good to say, "Look at this really complicated formula I know!" and then not even explain it. Furthermore, for 99% of FRC applications there is no need to do really crazy math, just a serious need to understand core concepts.

This thread is a really great place to start, and this post by Adam Heard is really good. As Adam suggests, I think you are much better off starting by doing a simple custom gearbox that consists of all off the shelf pieces except for the sideplates and working your way up. There is a huge wealth of information on Chiefdelphi, and don't be afraid to ask technical questions. 1 simple technical question is worth 100 "Is XXXX better than YYYY even though OPR says otherwise?!" threads.

Making gears is probably worth a separate thread. It has definitely been done. If you have access to some type of CNC machine you can waterjet/mill/route/lasercut larger gears that don't move quite so fast, but typically the smaller gears you'd find in a gearbox are hobbed, and that requires special tooling. It is much easier to call up a supplier, but if you dead set on making your own gears I'm sure someone on CD has done it.

Hope that helps get you started!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

This kind of attitude is unhelpful. It does no good to say, "Look at this really complicated formula I know!" and then not even explain it. Furthermore, for 99% of FRC applications there is no need to do really crazy math, just a serious need to understand core concepts.

It was NOT intended that way. I was intending to say that if needed, I could go more in-depth, but if you're just looking to scratch the surface, that isn't needed, and I gave an example of what would await if someone really wanted to go that far. (I was referring to the ASME shaft-design equation, BTW.)

Apparently, I'm a lousy communicator.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by EricH

It was NOT intended that way. I was intending to say that if needed, I could go more in-depth, but if you're just looking to scratch the surface, that isn't needed, and I gave an example of what would await if someone really wanted to go that far. (I was referring to the ASME shaft-design equation, BTW.)

Apparently, I'm a lousy communicator.

I though you communicated it well, don't know where Ian was coming from.

[chadr03]

If you are buying gears they usually sold by the tooth size, or Diametral Pitch, and the Pressure Angle.

The Pitch Diameter of the gear is measured roughly the middle of the tooth when you look at it from root to tip.

Here are some handy gearbox design formulas for spur gears.

Diametral Pitch=(Number of Teeth)/(Pitch Diameter)

Center Distance= ((Number of Teeth in Pinion)+(Number of Teeth in Gear))/(2*Diametral Pitch)

The tolerance of this center distance usually is pretty important and needs to be held at around +.003/+.010 for FIRST applications.

Make sure you purchase gear of the same pitch and pressure angle to mesh with each other. It does not work to mix and match.

AndyMark sells 20dp (or Diametral Pitch) gears with 14-1/2° Pressure angles and 32dp gears with 20° pressure angles.

[pmangels17]

Designing for two CIMs and a miniCIM is the same as designing for three CIMs, they have the exact same mounting style. Now, if you wanted two CIMs and a BAG or AndyMark motor, that would be a different story, but still doable.