Gearbox Donation?

[AnibaS]

Greetings from Team 2265!

We hope your build season is progressing along well!

Our team would like to ask a favor of the CD community. We are in need of a gearbox, and would be extremely appreciative if anyone could donate one to us! We basically are looking for a gearbox that will give a 13.5:1 gear reduction to a fisher price motor, such as this combination, or this one.

If anyone can help, please let us know! We live in NYC, and would be happy to pay for shipping!

[Saffles]

If you have any spares lying around, it would be fantastic if you could help us out. We are planning on ordering, but they will definitely not get here in time for us to practice and we can't be sure that they would be here in time for our regional (NJ and NY).

If you want them back toward Championships, we understand and will gladly ship them back to you!

We would be so grateful!

[Hawiian Cadder]

would it be possible to use the FP gearbox that came in the KOP? i can check to see if we have one Monday.

[Chris is me]

I would suggest buying the AM Planetary and then, if not already using the KoP transmission, mount it to the CIMple Box.

$90 is doable in one fundraiser! You can do it!

[artdutra04]

Do you have access to any kind of machining? If so, it's pretty easy to take the first two stages of gears out of the Kit of Parts FP gearbox and put them into a different housing that's easy to adapt to. Here's a photo of how we did this two years ago, but it does not have to be this complicated. All you need are two plates (1/8" or 3/16" aluminum is fine), some bearings, some spacers/standoffs, and two shafts. I haven't opened up this year's FP gearbox, but in the past the first two stages were either 32DP or 24DP gears.



If you have calipers, a center punch, and a lot of patience/steady hand, you could probably even make said gearbox plates on a drill press. It likely won't work as well as if machined, but it should still be feasible to make it work.

[MrForbes]

We made a gearbox like that last year using two aluminum plates, with a few holes punched (using a rotex punch) and reamed to size to mount flanged bearings. The shafts were 3/8" hex stock with the ends turned round to fit into the bearings, also one had the output shaft sticking out a ways. We used two of the same gear from the FP transmission, I think it was the second gear in the gear train? it was the white one in the picture above. We swiped one out of another older FP transmission.

As Art says, you can make a gearbox yourself if you just have the guts to try

you could even make it from hardwood such as oak, and use a Forstner bit to make the bearing holes.