Reverse Gear

[FizMan]

First off, thanks for the responses!

The program I used is just your run-of-the-mill 3D animator things. Cinema 4D XL (http://maxon.net) One of the splines in it is "cogwheel"; let's you edit things like the number of teeth; size of the teeth, bevels, radius, etc.


I couldn't quite visualize what you were getting across there Kevin... I look forward to your sketch Also, you mentioned that I'd lose efficiency with using the two smaller gears over the larger one; what kind of change in speed would you guestimate I'd lose over that? 5%? 1%? More? Less?

And Greencactus... I think I see where you're going with that... I went and modelled a full-size reverse-gearbox for all four wheels based on that. Unfortunately, my ISP is having techincal problems right now and I can't access many sites (including my web-host) so I can't upload the animations. But after putting them together, it's going to be iffy whether or not this system is feasible for FIRST. The only plus side of this is that it'd only need one set of motors and one gearbox and one transmission for a four wheel steering system... so I don't know; unless we can find a way to cut down the weight of this system... crunch some numbers; maybe it won't weigh toooo much... When I upload the animations, you'll see I already tried to squeeze some weight out of this by mounting all the shafts on the same bases and whatnot.

I suppose my next question is, what's the easiest (and light-weight) way to shift the dogs in this situation? Grrrr I wish I could upload the animations...

EDIT: I just realized I can put attachements here, so I'll go and convert some .gif's and upload them in a minute.

EDIT: Okay, I added the two of animations; but I had to reduce the quality to bring down the file size so that the ChiefDelphi forums would accept them. So I apologize for that. Anyways, first off, I wireframed the base boards, but they didn't come out too well when I dropped the quality, so you may or may not notice a few grey lines, that's the bases. Don't worry aboot them. Also, I forgot that the holes in the right gears (for the dog to fit into) don't move enough to fit the animation, so you'll see them jump (ignore it )

The power input is on the left with just the blue/cyan sprockets. The output is on the right. The two cyan gears on either side connect via a chain (didn't model the chain ), and the two blue gears connect via the intermediate purple gears. The red gears are actually the dogs that slides between the Blue & Cyan gears.

With the exception of the Blue/Cyan gears on the far left shaft, ALL of the rest are NOT connected to the shafts; they're all free running.

I figure you could run a chain from the dogs to their respective wheels.


So with this setup, you would move the individual dogs and output reverse/forwards to the different wheels, and have them ALL powered by the SAME set of motors/gearbox/transmission; eliminating the need to have two of each or to split up the power.

But yeah, seems a bit extravagant and heavy... but with an all-wheel stearing system; my logic tells me that you'd need to be able to reverse/forwards individual wheels as when they rotate, you'd need to choose which ones to reverse in order to turn the robot. And I don't like the idea of putting together four individual transmissions, gearboxes, and motor mounts for four different wheels...

Thoughts?


EDIT: My ISP is working again so I uploaded the better quality animations:






EDIT:
In terms of saving weight... I take it plastic gears aren't really an option eh?