pic: 3 speed concept - 1st gear

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by dubious elise

I think it will be more powerful than the three-speed in my car...

Given the way we build gearboxes you might be correct. but not really, I think if a first robot used all the motors combined you'd still be under 5HP.

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'd have to make a drawing to show you what I'm talking about, I think. Lathing the gear would get you something looking exactly like if you'd done the same thing with a rod or other cylinder. I'm talking about beveling each individual edge of each tooth.

The point of this is to reduce the cross-section that has to mesh.

I know exactly what you mean now. That's probably not a bad idea. I've seen a lot of meshing transmissions out there and they all seem to work okay. I wonder what teams like 254 or 60 do to their gearboxes to make them shift well. I've been looking at this one I wonder if they added c-c distance or beveled the gears or just left them.

I like mesh shifters because they are easier to construct, but what I don't like is that in every single one I've seen there are metal shavings inside it like this. The gears themselves have always looked fine, but metal shavings in gearboxes make me uncomfortable.

Anyway, I thought about a dog shifting 3 speed, but determined that there is not good way to do it, where there is a pretty good way with mesh shifting.