pic: Team 192's 2014 Gearbox

[Joey Milia]

Over the past few years, prototypes have been built in the fall to test the new ideas and designs that are part of each gearbox. This has been very important because over the last three years the gearboxes have used untried and unproven concepts. The construction techniques and gear choices of the worm and bevel gearboxes were new and needed to be proven to work before we could decide to use them duing the season. This year the main thing that needed to be proven was the redesigned ball shifting shaft. We liked the ball shifting concept but thought the vex design could be improved. This design has as single piece output shaft, and use open bearings in the gears instead of the bushings.

Originally Posted by Marc S.

What size belts and pulleys did you use? Have you seen any issues with the belts so far?

The belts are 9mm wide, 3mm pitch Gates GT2 belts. The pulleys on this gearbox are 20T aluminum and 48T nylon filled ABS. I don't know how they're preforming on this gearbox so far but we used the same belts on last years drive gearbox, shooter gearbox, and the prototype for this gearbox with no problems when the belts are tensioned.