GearBox built in Chassis frame

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by tomer

We thought about creating our gerbox frame into our chassis frame. Any experience? What do you guys think?

We are currently leaning towards shifters, possibly with PTO.

This can be a disaster or it can be your ticket to Einstein. It depends.

In general, you need a reason to do this beyond just that it can be done. For most teams, building custom gearboxes at all is probably the wrong answer. There are so many awesome COTS gearboxes and transmission there really isn't the need. You can build a great competitive robot without it.

So why?
Well, sometimes you just want to roll your own gearbox because gearboxes are cool and it is inspiring to get into the mud with involutes, addendums, dedendums, pressure angles, center distances, ...

Other times, you have a really great concept that just can't be done without the special something that a custom gearbox brings to the party.

But whatever the reason, it is going to be harder and, unless you know what you are doing, probably not as robust as buying a COTS gearbox. Oh, and if you need a spare (and you should probably plan on it) then you need to build it yourself. And if it is built into the chassis, it probably isn't as simple as loosening a few screw and swapping the thing out.

I design gears and gear boxes for a living. I am HAPPY to write a check and have a solution in mailed to me.

YMMV.

Dr. Joe J.