Something that popped into my head this afternoon and I thought might be useful in some situations. I’m looking for something that could disconnect the flow of power between gear stages without turning the gearbox off, and to do that whenever the system is experiencing a certain amount of resistence using purely mechanical means. which means no pneumatics or electronics, and no human input. it doesn’t have to be able to reset itself back to normal condition however. basically like a fuse but for power transmission.
I’m sure someone has already done this before at some point, so feel free to share. thanks in advance.
You’re looking for a clutch of a particular type. These aren’t typically used in FRC, but there are ways to do it.
One of the easier ways to do this for FRC would be a V-belt–if you set it up right, the V-belt can slip at a certain applied torque and then self-reset once things stop.
If you’re okay with this, then you could very simply couple a pulley/gear to a shaft using a pin that will shear in half at a certain torque. Roll pins are commonly used for this.
The term is slip clutch and there are many examples in industrial and agricultural driveline applications. Also nearly every cordless drill/driver has a nice adjustable one in it.
