Engaging Gears Perpendicular to Shaft Direction?

[Mr. Ivey]

Yes, you could do this, it would take time and in my opinion pretty spiffy enginering. But there would be some issues like grinding. My team had the CIM motors geared down on a the bot we used 2 years agot. Even though the gears were in constant contact, there was a very small bit of play in the distance between two of the gears, this caused the gear to become flat over time. So you would have a big issue with grinding gears in this idea. There is the possibility of binding, too much pressure pulling that gear into the powered gear could cause problems. You also must think about the movement you are creating. You could close out that entire gearbox, so that nothing could get into it, but you probably won't. Having this movement in competition could be a serious problem. If your opponent has an arm or some object protruding out of the bot, that extremety could get between the gears, and you could not shift. You are also creating a nightmare in the repair department. This design, in my opinion, could cause you to spend more money than needed, and cause you to have to repair parts more often.

A tip I use when working on practicle gear box designs is "when designing, draw something would find easy to build and repair, draw something that will accomplish your goal quickly, draw something that will that doesn't have more parts than needed, and draw something that will acomplish your goal in a simple method."
ivey