Integrating Encoder Into Gearbox

[asid61]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

You are being too concerned with space in your design. Poke the shaft 3/8 - 1/2" past the gearbox plate, and put the set screw on the other side. That's what we do.

When you *turn* the hole into the shaft, finish it with a reamer. You'll get a nicer fit. Probably a .2505 reamer.

For mounting, we've been bending a lexan z out of 1/32" lexan and using that to constrain the encoder torsionally. It seems to be working fine. There should be some pictures on our picasa site of how we've solved this exact problem before.

+1 on the Z-shaped lexan/polycarb mounting. We used 1/16" and it's fine as well. also +1 on sticking the shaft out of the gearbox farther, it helps with making mounting easier.
We have used set screws in the past and it's worked fine. We used the plastic/nylon tipped ones from McMaster to avoid killing the encoder shaft.
Some teams have used surgical tubing for a connection between shaft and encoder, but personally we've experienced lots of slippage both in absolute and incremental situations. That being said, it definitely helped avoid breakage due to the flexible coupling.