Andymark Planetary Transmission...

[Damaku250]

Which gearbox are you refereing to? If you are talking about the AM Planetary Gearbox (http://www.andymark.biz/am-0002.html),then yes you have to remove the existing gear and press the new gear that comes with the planetary on to the shaft of the motor.

Yeah, that's the one, but to my knowledge it did not come with a new gear.
:S As we are a rookie team we weren't aware of this.
I do not believe our school has an arbor press either.

Is it a viable option to drill out the mounting pate to a diameter that would accept the gear?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Damaku250

Could anyone tell me how to mount a FP motor to the this kind of gearbox? I'm not sure if we're allowed to yank the gear off, and if so, how?

Getting the pinion off a FP is actually pretty simple if you're willing to stoop to the level of pure brute force.

The trick is that the pinion material is actually relatively soft and deformable. So what you want to do is squish the pinion by grabbing it in a vise, arbor press, etc. You just squish the pinion from one direction, then turn it 90 degrees and squish it from the other. This deforms the hole in the pinion enough to make it MUCH easier to remove. You can tell if you're doing it right by looking at the shaft-pinion interface. If you're deforming the pinion, you'll see a small gap develop there.

Note, you must be extremely careful that you're only crushing the pinion and not some part of your motor's frame. Also, this isn't the nicest way in the world to use a vise, so try to pick one that you don't care as much about. Finally, this technique works much better with the 15-tooth pinion than the 19-tooth.

[David Guzman]

Originally Posted by Damaku250

Yeah, that's the one, but to my knowledge it did not come with a new gear.
:S As we are a rookie team we weren't aware of this.
I do not believe our school has an arbor press either.

Is it a viable option to drill out the mounting pate to a diameter that would accept the gear?

The problem is not to make the gear fit through the hole, the planetary is designed to work with the 15 tooth 32 pitch pinion and it will not work with anything else (others would not mesh properly with the planet gears).It should have come with the Planetaries, if it didn't I would try to contact AndyMark and ask them about it. The website lists it as part of the hardware.

http://store.andymark.biz/am-0002.html

Hardware
# Two 8mm id ball bearings, (19mm od, 22mm od) supporting output shaft
# steel planet and sun gears, 32 dp, 20 degree p.a.
# Five planet gears (12 tooth)
# 15 tooth sun gear, with 0.125 inch bore
# 40 tooth ring gear
# Two #10-32 mounting holes, on a 1 inch radius from center

If you do not have an Arbor Press, your best bet is to order the mounting plates w/ motor that are ready to be installed. Our team has gotten away with using a vice to press the gear onto the shaft at the events but I do not recommend it.

[Damaku250]

Would it be in any way acceptable to bore the planetary mounting cap larger?
We believe this would be the easiest way as it would allow for easy motor replacement in the event of failure, and would be the most economical.

[Borisdamole]

bane bots trans. have cost us too many matches for me to EVER trust them again...

ANDY MARK is the way to go....

AM parts are all high quality, easy to use, and the stand behind their product 100%

wish I could say that about bane bots...... I cant....

[PAR_WIG1350]

I would not recommend making any holes in the gearbox or motor mounting plate. This will allow debris to enter the gearbox and do bad things to it.

[Damaku250]

According to one of our mentors/post-secondary students, there was a shipping error resulting in some teams actually ending up with a 15-tooth pinion on the FP motor, which I think might be the case as it seems to mesh properly with the AM planetary. the normal stock 19-tooth wouldn't do that would it?
If this is the case, would that mean we just need to yank the gear off (with a neighbouring team's arbor press), install the back plate then re-install it?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Damaku250

If this is the case, would that mean we just need to yank the gear off (with a neighbouring team's arbor press), install the back plate then re-install it?

The Planetary comes with the proper gear to install on the FP output shaft. Just to be safe, I would always use that.

[Damaku250]

The Planetary comes with the proper gear to install on the FP output shaft. Just to be safe, I would always use that.

Originally Posted by Damaku250

Yeah, that's the one, but to my knowledge it did not come with a new gear.

As stated above, we appear not to have received said gear.

[Steven Sigley]

We're using the planetaries in a funky way, 2 FP's, going into 2 planetaries going into a toughbox. This will operate our kicker.

[joek]

wow, got enough torque there dude?

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by qwertyuiop[]\

Banebots planetary is definetly super reliable. my team has reused the same 4 gearboxes for drivetrain on our robot for 3 years running. not once have we experienced any problem. People just have a bias against banebots because of a bad gearbox along time ago(maybe not that long). But people who think banebots have zero quality really are just close minded to the new gearboxes that they have made.

Steve, were you around during the whole plate-bending-in-half experience that went on with the banebots transmissions (I believe it was in '07)?

In a competition like FIRST where you pay thousands of dollars to enter, and then have 12 matches total during a regional, a single component failure is a major major thing for most teams.

A large number of the banebots transmissions failed, some catastrophically. I can't imagine the cost of that if your translated that into lost design, engineering and playing time for all those many many teams that used the gearboxes in the KOP.

On top of that, Banebots compounded the issue with very poor customer service.

Banebots may be a very good company now, but once you've been severely burned by a company's components, there are very few people who would go back and try them again just to see if they've improved.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=banebots+fail
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=banebots+fail
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=banebots+fail

I harbor no ill will towards banebots.... but will be a long long time before I ever consider another one of their products.

[ChrisP]

This year our team has decided to go with the andy mark transmissions yet again, and they're doing great!

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Steven Sigley

We're using the planetaries in a funky way, 2 FP's, going into 2 planetaries going into a toughbox. This will operate our kicker.

That isn't a funky way. If you look at the torque curves and free speeds, a fisherprice through an AM planetary gearbox ends up being nearly the equivalent of a CIM. Just don't try to run it slowly. Fishes don't like going slowly.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Steve, were you around during the whole plate-bending-in-half experience that went on with the banebots transmissions (I believe it was in '07)?

In a competition like FIRST where you pay thousands of dollars to enter, and then have 12 matches total during a regional, a single component failure is a major major thing for most teams.

A large number of the banebots transmissions failed, some catastrophically. I can't imagine the cost of that if your translated that into lost design, engineering and playing time for all those many many teams that used the gearboxes in the KOP.

On top of that, Banebots compounded the issue with very poor customer service.

Banebots may be a very good company now, but once you've been severely burned by a company's components, there are very few people who would go back and try them again just to see if they've improved.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=banebots+fail
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=banebots+fail
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=banebots+fail

I harbor no ill will towards banebots.... but will be a long long time before I ever consider another one of their products.

Sound like you harbor a lot of ill will towards them and I remember them busting their buts and spending a fortune in customer service when that first problem happened.

I haven't used their products since that initial problem but then again I live 40 miles from AndyMark and I love their products.

Nobody is perfect, not everyone gets it right the first time. Ask somebody about the problems with the first AM planetary boxes, broken omni wheels and those first 6" mech wheels. But they learned from their mistakes and these products have evolved into superior products.

I get a bit frustrated when companies that have worked hard to make our jobs easier and have spent their hard earned money to support us continue to be bashed years after problems occurred. I still cringe when people bash Festo for the valve problems from a few years back even when I know that many of these problems were because of improper use. Lucky they still continue to donate these products.

Sorry about the tenor of this post but these thoughts have been brewing in me for a while.