Looking for KOP Helical Gears

[ChuckDickerson]

Hello All,

This is my first post to CD although I have been registered for a while reading old posts. There is a lot of good information here. I am a mentor for team 456 in Vicksburg, MS. Our team is pretty small and we have $0.00 until the new school year. The bulk of our team funding comes from the school board and a little bit that the team can raise from local businesses. This year was our 5th year in FIRST (my 1st) and we did pretty well at our regional in Houston and at nationals in Atlanta. The school is really behind us after our success this year and the community and some local businesses are starting to show interest as well. Unfortunately, all but three of our 18 students were seniors this year so next year will be a whole new team for the most part.

In preparation for next year I am wanting to do some "off season" prototyping work and am looking for gear sets that will work with the black plastic gear boxes from the KOP. I have some extra plastic boxes from this year but our KOP was missing the helical gears and we didn't figure that out until it was too late to get replacements from FIRST. Since we have $0 this "off season" prototyping will come out of my personal pocket. I know that I can get new KOP helical gear sets from MSC or McMaster but they are about $70 per set. I am looking for a cheaper source. Does anyone know where I can get some suitable gears that are less expensive? I need at least 4 sets. I just want to use them as right angle gear boxes. The gears must work with the black plastic KOP gear boxes but don't have to be the exact KOP helical gears. I would prefer it if they are 2:1 gear ratio like the KOP gears but could probably use 1:1 (or something else for that matter) as long as all the sets are the same gear ratio. I think the design of the black plastic boxes will not really allow miter gears so I think that really limits the gears to helical gears. Did any teams use any gears in the black plastic KOP gearboxes other than the helical gears that came in the KOP? If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. This is not critical. I am just wanting to play around with some simple drivetrain ideas before the 6 week crunch next year. Of course, if any teams have any of the KOP helical gear sets that they don't need or want I will be more than happy to make a small donation to your team.

BTW: Is this the correct forum to post this type of thing? Is there a "Parts Swap" section on CD that I don't know about. It seems like something that should be here somewhere.

Thanks,
Chuck Dickerson