Banebots 42mm gearbox: Recommendations for use

[Jonathan Norris]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Now the good news/bad news. First the bad news: Banebots tells me they are out of the 256:1 42mm gearboxes. now the good news: with 64:1 being the highest ratio they sell, these gearboxes can not only take full stall loads of the FP or the Banebots motor, they have dynamic loading safety margins of 2.5 for the FP and 3.5:1 for the BB.

Joe I see where you are going with this, the lower gear ratio gearbox's are going to be much more robust because the fewer number of stages. But there is a good reason the 256:1 gearbox's have been selling like hotcakes, those are the only ones which are highly applicable to this year's game. Teams are looking to use the FP motors for high torque, low speed situations this year. Not like last year where some teams used them to power shooter wheels or run belting systems, in a higher speed less torque intensive situation. Making the 64:1 gearbox far less useful to teams than the 256:1 gearbox this year. Many teams looked at the 256:1 gearbox and thought "Wow that's a perfect ratio to use a FP motor to power an arm system". My team received our 256:1 gearbox's yesterday, and promptly dissected and inspected them, comparing the D design the design from last year. Lets say we are disappointed and concerned about the life time this system will work. We have designed our system to share the load across two of the gearbox's and sprocketed them down to a very reasonable level where we will will be using only 1/5 of the FP's stall torque. It now worries me that these gearbox's are no longer available, if we choose to use the ones we have will we be able to purchase replacements in the future?? Why are they no longer available?? simply out of stock, or quality problems?