pic: VEX High Reduction Gearbox

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Raul

All I can say is - we are such geeks!

Totally... and proud of it.

Are there people out there who don't geek out over stuff like this? Weirdos...

[Abrakadabra]

Arthur Ganson has a sculpture at the MIT museum called "Machine In Concrete" that consists of a 12-stage geartrain, where each stage reduces the speed of rotation by a factor of 50. The left end is spinning furiously at around 200 rpm; the right end is embedded in a concrete block. The end in the concrete makes one revolution every 2 trillion years or so.

Here is a partial picture of the machine from Ganson's own website:
http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/sc...te%20page.html

But to really appreciate it, you can see a video of the sculpture (and Ganson's comments about it) at the 8:30 mark in this video from the 2004 TED conference:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/a...sculpture.html

[T3_1565]

I have always wondered how fast you would need to spin something for it to spontaniously combust.... care to give it a try??

[Greg Needel]

Along these same lines anyone care to predict what the lifespan of a vex motor constantly running would be?

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

Along these same lines anyone care to predict what the lifespan of a vex motor constantly running would be?

I don't know the answer, but we're certainly thinking about doing the same thing

[Rich Kressly]

Thanks to senior Petra Hartman LMHS now has its own version of the JVN High Reduction Gearbox to teach gear theory to 1712 members and students in the Engineering Design classes. Woot!

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/33863?
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/33864?

[JVN]

This gearbox was on display in the 148 pit in Atlanta this year. I noticed quite a few people playing with it.

[Andy L]

Originally Posted by JVN

This gearbox was on display in the 148 pit in Atlanta this year. I noticed quite a few people playing with it.

I spent a few minutes playing with it, and trying to explain it's coolness to some parents, they didn't share my enthusiasm for it.

[Crump]

i think it would be fun to make one of these gear reduction towers and make it turn once every 42 days... the 42 days is completely an arbitrary number

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by JVN

This gearbox was on display in the 148 pit in Atlanta this year. I noticed quite a few people playing with it.

John -

In the spirit of absurdly high gear reductions, maybe next year you should put something like this on your drivetrain as soon as it is constructed. Paired with a ratcheting rectifier, you can make yourself a pretty nifty odometer. I've always been curious to know precisely how many miles a 148 robot travels in the course of build, practice, and competition...

[IKE]

Originally Posted by JVN

Totally... and proud of it.

Are there people out there who don't geek out over stuff like this? Weirdos...

Apparently there are others outside the realm of FIRST that geek out about this too.


http://jalopnik.com/5302043/on-the-p...-transmissions

"Artist Arthur Ganson's creation called "Machine with Concrete" provides a beautiful illustration of the power of a transmission. Should you input only 1 lb-ft of torque, the other end could deliver 244 quintillion lb-ft.

Ganson's piece demonstrates the unbelievable power which can be generated through simple gear reduction. It uses an electric motor turning at a modest 200 RPM and mates it to 12 identical sets of 1/50th gear reducers for a total reduction of 1/244,140,625,000,000,000,000. Of course no material in the universe could actually deliver that kind of power without shattering into pieces and even if such materials existed, turning only one rotation at that speed would take over two trillion years. It turns so slowly that embedding the final drive in concrete will have no appreciable effect — ever. The universe itself is only about 10 billion years old, and in another 10 billion years the sun will expand into a red giant and consume the Earth anyway, the final drive having complete only 0.5% of one rotation."


My emphasis added to my favorite part.