pic: Shaft Drive Bearing Blocks

[MAteo9944]

Originally Posted by RyanN

Great work on your drive train system! One thing to think about that I thought of... How about making a worm gear system. I think this would be more reliable than the one that you currently have, and you will have much greater control of your robot. The only thing is that you probably would want a fairly small gear on the axle that goes to the wheel.

Just my $0.02...

The problem with worm gears is in the efficiency. They are usually about 60-70% efficient as opposed to the 95% efficiency of a miter gear. Some worm gears are even as low as 20% though I have also seen 98% reported.

[Jeff Pahl]

Originally Posted by MAteo9944

The problem with worm gears is in the efficiency. They are usually about 60-70% efficient as opposed to the 95% efficiency of a miter gear. Some worm gears are even as low as 20% though I have also seen 98% reported.

Depending on the game and strategy, the resistance of worm gears to being back driven may be advantageous, or a significant disadvantage. However, I think it would take a lot of strategy advantage to make up for the loss in efficiency.

And it would make it about impossible to push the robot around without turning it on and having the controls. Since it usually has to go in the back of my truck to go to demos, etc. I would really hate that

[RyanN]

Originally Posted by Jeff Pahl

Depending on the game and strategy, the resistance of worm gears to being back driven may be advantageous, or a significant disadvantage. However, I think it would take a lot of strategy advantage to make up for the loss in efficiency.

And it would make it about impossible to push the robot around without turning it on and having the controls. Since it usually has to go in the back of my truck to go to demos, etc. I would really hate that

I was not sure of the efficiency of a worm gear system. I did not analyze how a worm gear system would be disadvantageous to a team and only looked at the advantages. I saw that the robot would be very responsive (Like when the driver would let go of the joysticks, it would immediately stop) and that other robots could not push my team's robot around, but then you said that it would be a "significant disadvantage," which I can see happening very easily. It would be almost impossible to push a locked robot across the field in the time frame that FIRST gives us during a match. Another disadvantage I found, and I'm not sure if you guys said or not, is that when pushing a robot, the efficiency of the system decreases as friction between the gears increases... I remember this now from my Erector Set when I was a kid. Brings back some memories... Now back to reality; now that I see the disadvantages, I would not use a worm gear system. I guess another advantage that I thought of is that this system would probably be more reliable than our traditional chain method.