Drivetrain experimenting

[Mark Sheridan]

Well we are going to test some dewalt gearboxes this summer too. There other things to test besides drivetrain performance. We don't really need to test performance since we can calculate it before hand. I doubt the theoretic calculations will be drastically different from real world results.

The real test for us is if we can convert the gearboxes to adapt a CIM or a FP in a reasonable time using tools in our wood shop. We really don't want to find assembly and modification issues in the middle of the build season. We will work out the kinks now to save us time later.

We may also tryout fancier stuff such as automatic shifting or something like that.

Also, we want to try using the dewalt motor and gearbox (actually the whole drill) to make instant prototypes. In the past, we used a spare drill grabbing a shaft with its chuck. We want to try a more integrated system where we can bolt the drill to the prototype device, change the gear reductions easily by shifting gears and using different combinations of sprockets and finally, be able to use the drill's trigger switch for early tests and later be able to switch to a speed controller. Hopefully, we can use this to make better prototypes.