Super Shifter Question

[Ice Berg]

Hey, so i was cadding a drive train, and i downloaded the andymark supershifter model from the first cad library. This model shows the output shaft coming out of the bottom right hand corner if you are facing the gearbox. is there anyway to assemble the gear box so that the output shaft is on the other half of the gear box?

[Greg Needel]

what do you mean by "other half of the gearbox" do you want the output shaft to come out the same side as the motors or do you want it in a different location on the same surface.

If you want it to come out by the motors, you will have to make a custom output shaft, and relocate the encoder.

If you want it in another location on the same side of the gearbox, you are out of luck, unless you consider rotating the gearbox relocating the shaft.

[JesseK]

Flip the two outside plates around, then reassemble the gearbox so it's a mirror of the original setup. You'll run into some things to overcome, such as the optical encoder mount not fitting, the possibility of the pneumatic piston mount screws not being fully threaded al the way through, etc. These are just a few things to overcome and there may be more, but a team I spoke to in Atlanta said they were able to do it (11 or 12-something).

[Nikhil Bajaj]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Flip the two outside plates around, then reassemble the gearbox so it's a mirror of the original setup. You'll run into some things to overcome, such as the optical encoder mount not fitting, the possibility of the pneumatic piston mount screws not being fully threaded al the way through, etc. These are just a few things to overcome and there may be more, but a team I spoke to in Atlanta said they were able to do it (11 or 12-something).

We did a mirror-image setup as well. The only issue is the optical encoder mount, and we simply drilled one hole and rotated the entire aluminum mount piece (although, we significantly altered that piece since we weren't using the servo to shift.) But drilling one hole would be all you would have to do in order to assemble the whole thing in a mirror configuration, provided you have clearance around the new position of the encoder mount. So as long as you have an appropriate drill bit and a 10-32 (or 10-24? I can't remember.) tap, you can fairly easily do the mirror assembly.

Having fabricated replacement plates for four Super Shifters, figured out what to do in order to mirror two of them, and then assembling them and taking them apart again to put in a different gear ratio, I have seemingly become intimately familiar with the innards of the Super Shifter. If you don't need it to be perfectly mirrored, then I think Andy and Alan have a great solution for that, and it sounds fairly painless.

[Ice Berg]

Thanks for the advice. The reason I want the output shaft on the left side is so that when two super shifters are mounted opposite each other on a drivetrain, the motors will be a mirror image of each other, and can be braced to each other. This can't be done by just rotating one gearbox, so I'm going to make the encoder and pneumatic modifications. Thanks again for the help.

[Nikhil Bajaj]

Hey, Seth,

I just remembered after looking at some pictures of the Super Shifter--a word of warning...on the original Super Shifter plate that has the motors bolted to it, one of the places where a lock-nut would normally go there is a nut-type threaded thing that is built into the plate (I'm not sure exactly how it was inserted in there, Andy can probably explain it better.) It is there because otherwise there would be a nut that would be interfering with the mounting of a CIM.

If you mirror the plate, and then put the bolt through there, you will be yanking it out of its hole rather than pulling it against the plate. I would be very careful about how I approached that situation, as if you were to screw into it with a bolt and it came loose then you'd lose that bolt connection on that corner of the gearbox.

Sorry, that didn't come to mind immediately because we remade our own motor plates as part of our drivetrain, and then used counter-sunk bolts on that side so everything was flush.

So I guess there is a bit of a difficulty there in using the default plates in a mirrored configuration.

If you'd like in a couple days (Saturday?) I can take a picture of our particular setup, though it may not help you if you're not manufacturing your own side-plates for the gear box.

Good luck,
Nikhil

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Nikhil Bajaj

Hey, Seth,

I just remembered after looking at some pictures of the Super Shifter--a word of warning...on the original Super Shifter plate that has the motors bolted to it, one of the places where a lock-nut would normally go there is a nut-type threaded thing that is built into the plate (I'm not sure exactly how it was inserted in there, Andy can probably explain it better.) It is there because otherwise there would be a nut that would be interfering with the mounting of a CIM.

Good luck,
Nikhil

Good point, Nikhil.

If you do assemble the gearbox backwards, you will need to remove this PEM-style flush mounted nut. Simply thread in a screw, fully into the nut, and tap the head of the screw. Then, turn the plate over and, using an arbor press, press the flush-mount PEM nut into the aluminum plate. You may need to use a hammer on top of the arbor press ram to get the face of the PEM nut flush with the plate face.

Seth,

Doing all of these things... new encoder bracket, re-mounting this PEM nut, disassembling, reassembling, making sure the encoder wheel is positioned correctly, etc... that is alot of work. Are you sure you need to brace the motors? Is there a vertical load on the motors that we are not aware of? The majority of the teams who mount the motors to the Super Shifters simply face-mount the motors without bracing. This is standard practice.

Are you using this in an application that requires bracing the motors? If you can get by with not having the motors aligned from side to side, you could be saving yourself a world of work, and you would also have only 1 Super Shifter configuration needed as a spare.

Sincerely,
Andy B.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Ice Berg

...shows the output shaft coming out of the bottom right hand corner if you are facing the gearbox. is there anyway to assemble the gear box so that the output shaft is on the other half of the gear box?

Do you want it coming out of the bottom left hand corner as you face it? Just rotate the gearbox 90 degrees clockwise. Does that give you what you want?

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Do you want it coming out of the bottom left hand corner as you face it? Just rotate the gearbox 90 degrees clockwise. Does that give you what you want?

Thanks, Alan.

Many teams requested a mirror image of the Super Shifter in order to place it in the same position on both sides of a drive base. The simple solution to this is not to re-assemble it as a mirrored image, but rather to do what Alan suggested above.

Andy B.