Engaging Gears Perpendicular to Shaft Direction?

[Matt Adams]

Originally Posted by 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.
• 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.

I summerized some of you concerns in bullets. I am aware of all of those, I think I made a pretty clear in my first post:

Originally Posted by Matt Adams

1. I am aware this is more difficult
2. I am aware that you need to be careful about backlash and proper spacing
3. I am aware that you run the risk of stripping teeth due to the possibillity of teeth prematuring engaging on the outter-most edges instead of at the pitch diameter.

All that aside, has it been done?

My response is going to sound grouchy, and I'm definitely not:
Before you start stating problems with a "design", make sure you're actually looking at a design!

(All of those bulleted concerns, especially the last three extrapolations, were based on a 5 second MS Paint sketch with 4 circles and an arrow. It might have been jumping the gun a bit...)

However, I do appreciate the concern, Mr. Ivey. I know your intentions were in the right place. I've just seen this happen in other posts too, by many other people. It's just something I wanted to make everyone aware of to make the CD forums an even better place!

To stick on topic...

Has sliding gears in their plane of rotation in a gear box been successfully done?

Matt