Gear alternatives

[Booger]

I was looking for lighter gears than the ones i have now. Does anyone know a site that sells spoked gears.

[Ben Piecuch]

What gears do you have now?

Are you specifically talking about gears, or are you refering to sprockets?

Typically, you won't find a spoked gear until you go to very large toothed gears. Most teams here will lighten the gears themselves by either drilling holes through the bulk of the gear, or turning down the "webbing" of the gear (or both...) If your design does not require a lot of torque, you can use plastic gears, like those from the Fisher Price gearbox. Plastic Gearbox

If you're looking for sprockets that are lighter, you can find aluminum sprockets from both IFI Robotics and AndyMark.

Good Luck,

BEN

[Not2B]

And if you are just looking for a light way to transmit power, timing pulleys can also work. (Make sure you figure them out before you use them, they can be tricky.)

[sanddrag]

W.M. Berg has aluminum gears in 16 pitch (and perhaps other sizes) but they'll cost you a bit and take a while to get. What size are you looking for?

[=Martin=Taylor=]

I don't know anything about these. But how strong are composite material gears? They have a steel insert and the gear teeth are made from some sort of plastic.

They look pretty light.

Here are some links:
Gears
Gears
And More Gears

[UnderDark]

I'm no materials engineer, but since the plastic teeth with take most of the pressure of use, I would think that they would be just as strong/weak as fully plastic gears, but will weigh more.

[Veselin Kolev]

Aluminum gears, alloy 2024. If you want, anodize them.

Or just take the gear to a drill press and cut some holes. Dont machine lightening holes... too expensive. Just mark it up using cad, and cut some holes.