We are using the West Coast Dual Speed Gearbox (217-3424) with falcons in the inboard position. Our gearboxes use 12 tooth steel spline gears (217-6919) and our input gears are 42 tooth aluminum spur gears(217-3215). As we run these gearboxes the teeth on the 42 tooth gear start to shred and sharpen during operation. Our gearboxes are greased, the teeth have full engagement. Are we the only team running into this issue, if not how are other teams solving it?
We had a problem in 2018 with this. Glad you found this now and not at an event.
Recommendations:
- Heavy grade grease with MoS
- Check the motor mount holes. Go by the instructions for the tooth spacing. Don’t guess by appearances. We found the proper position looked tighter than our expectations.
- Check for shaft fit and gear wobble. Invest in some shims and wave springs to take up the excess space. McMaster has plenty of options at the diameter to circumscribe the hex shafts.
What you’ve got there is a progressive failure, so if you’re seeing the metal has worn already you need to replace the current gears and then apply the necessary changes to fix the problem.
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If you have the weight, use steel gears.
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This is completely not necessary. We have run 11t and 12t steel gears against the VEXpro aluminum gears for 5 seasons (not the same gears over 5 seasons) with no issues.
Grease and proper alignment are key, but it is unusual wear if you are running the standard gearbox with the correct gears in the correct positions.
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Necessary, no. More reliable and harder to get wrong? IMO, yes
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Our team uses 11T since it meshes better with the gears than with 12T. That might help with the issue
What makes you say the 11T gears mesh better than a 12T gear? They should both work equally well to my understanding.
The 12 tooth 20 DP gears have undercut, which makes them work marginally worse than the 11T profile shifted gears.
The 11T gears have no undercut which gives them a pure involute profile.
We also only use the 11T gears for the same reason mentioned above.
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Switch to 13T gears so that you’re in the outboard position and the problem will disappear.
The snowman holes are the worst.
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This is the correct answer - the snowman holes are the problem. I had endless issues with these in 2016. You can 3D print an insert that will fill the unused half of the snowman. That said, steel pinion gears are cheap and last extremely long.
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@Paul_Copioli explains it really well. Here’s his explanation:
12 tooth 20 DP gears have undercut, which makes them work marginally worse than the 11T profile shifted gears.
The 11T gears have no undercut which gives them a pure involute profile.
We also only use the 11T gears for the same reason mentioned above.
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