The perfect gearbox

[lukevanoort]

I have a few dream 'boxes for different purposes.

General use: A two speed dog (Woburn style) with aluminum gears (more on these later) and a polycarb/aluminum shell. Now to explain my odd materials choices, the polycarb would be ultra thin, whereas the aluminum would be beefy. Now the aluminum would make a crisscross structure supporting only the high load points (eg the bearing mounts) and forces (eg the mounting holes) on the gearbox. The polycarb would mostly to keep garbage out, it could even be saran-wrap. The aluminum gears wouldn't be strong enough especially considering they'd be milled for lightness, except for some tricky chemistry. Drop them in a vacuum chamber with H2 (hydrogen) and CH4 (methane) at 50 Torr, add heat and voila! diamond coating. Or you could just pay a company to do it, whatever.

Insane use: A Thunderchicken CCT with the aforementioned polycarb/aluminum structure and lightened diamond plated aluminum gears. It would be driven by the bike chip, and two small chips with the FP providing the ratio control function.

Insane use 2: This box also uses polycarb/aluminum/diamond coating construction. It uses a ball bearing shifter with three planetary gear selections. It is powered by the bike chip, two small chips, and the FP (maybe a Globe and window motor too!) Bring on the twelve motor drive!

Absolutely Insane use: Okay, time for my nuttiest idea yet. There is a central gearbox that matches ratios between all the motors in the kit (except that crummy Mabuchi motor) to, say 500 rpm. There are then two separate sets of CVT v-belt assemblies. These allow for the speed on one side to be reduced to, say 50 rpm, with the other side doing 300 rpm allowing for skid steer turning. This could also have four CVT assemblies for holonomic. Yay! as many motor as you have drive!

It's times like this when I wish we had more money and machining capability.