Gearbox Maximum Torque

[A_Reed]

Originally Posted by MarkoRamius1086

Team 48 was going to use a 256:1 Banebot planetary. I was looking around in the North Carolina pits, when I happened into their area. I noticed them installing a hanger for the vertical bar, but I didnt see any motors or transmissions. When my team and I was working on a hanger we found a really nice 40:1 wormgear... but it was too pricy. Well, back to 48. Upon further inspection I saw they had a Fisher-Price and a parallel silver gearbox. I had never run into Banebots transmissions before this point, probably due to their reputation. There was a small orange sticker on that thing and I was fairly shocked about the reduction... until that moment I didnt think it was possible to cram such a small reduction into a small transmission.

It was only 4 stages of 4:1.

But, Sadly we had to remove the whole system when we found out our nice clean 'ground down' welds snapped under the forces required pull the robot up. Note for next year don't grind welds to make them look 'pretty'.

And yes you can figure out the maximum torque of any gearbox you just need to apply the principles of machine design and properties of materials to determine the physical properties of the material the gears and shafts are made from and then the actual max stress that can be absorbed by the gears and shafts and apply a factor of safety to insure the parts never break.