pic: Shifting Drivetrain with Transmissions

[Jared]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

How a cantilevered gear right next to the plate frame any worse than the cantilever of the pinion on your CIM output shaft? Also the cluster gear fits over the area where the pneumatic cylinder is, so no space is lost. You are right that flipping the CIMs takes out CIM area, but you are forgetting that the pneumatic cylinder is there and you still need a cutout in your bellypan large enough to service with. I think you'll find that in the end you're not going to be saving as much room as you think you will be.

Good point about the pneumatic cylinder. I didn't even notice it on yours. For space, I think it all comes down to what you're putting in the middle of the robot. For us last year, the pneumatic cylinder was low enough that it didn't get in the way of the ball, but the year before we wouldn't have been able to fit our climber in if we went with that design.

Since my first post on your gearbox thread (where I shared that cantilevered gears worked well for us), we had multiple failures of these gears.

From my experience with hex bearings and hex shafts, there is a small amount of play between the shaft and bearing. This isn't really noticeable when the gear is in between the bearings, but it becomes significant once you have the gear hanging off the side. This makes it so that the gear is always slightly in the wrong spot, and you end up with a wear pattern like the one on the remaining teeth in this gear (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...9&d=1395019667).

The cantilevered CIM shafts are steel as opposed to aluminum, and can bend under heavy use.