Need for Aluminum Gears and Sprockets?

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

Hate to be a bubble burster, but this would put material costs way up. In order to have a hub, you need round (or square) that is greater than the outside diameter of the sprocket. If you have no hub, then it would be simple to machine it out of plate. If a hub is really needed, then why not machine a nice little 6061 spacer and bolt it to the flat sprocket? It'll end up costing you less in materials, and can easily be done on a manual mill...

Is it worth making a two-piece sprocket (i.e. hub plus flat sprocket), which requires extra drilling and fastening operations, and introduces several points of failure? What about on small-diameter sprockets where there's little room to effectively attach bolts?

For many teams, I think that the convenience (no extra time or labour required) of the one-piece design outweighs the moderate material cost savings that could be realized.