I was wondering if anyone else got gears from the same batch as us : our supposed 28T gear, after counting, was revealed to actually have 32T !I"ll need to double check all the stuff I bought a couple weeks ago.
Have you reached out to Rev support directly? Knowing them, they’ll try to make it right for you!
Yep we’ll try to do that rapidly, only thing is that shipping is 100$ plus… I’m not sure they can cover that too
So now confirmed on different skus…
Rev has a lot of QC work to do in the off-season.
I understand there is a desire to jump on opportunities to grab market share, but details matter as well. Customer support will be there for you on this one, my limited experience with rev support has been pretty good.
This is an error on the company. There’s no way they won’t make this right. Just ask them. I’d be shocked if they didn’t fix this for you, especially since you have no other quick options in France.
Rev’s customer service employees are great, just reach out - in your situation it might be best to just call them.
Stuff like this for QC could be easily addressed with a printed/laser cut sizing jig. Employees can make sure the gear fits in the slot/has the right number of teeth without counting each one by hand, that matches the label before packing it. Each employee in QC could have one to test fit all of the gear sizes like a thing for paint swatch samples or countertop chips.
Stuff like that is surprisingly rare… I once encountered a #4-40 tap that was mis-laser-marked as #2-56; @sanddrag might remember that. As it turns out, a #4-40 tap does not like being forced into the hole for #2-56 threads in a CNC tapping cycle. It was the last couple holes on a relatively complex part. That was not a fun discovery.
Did you check the thread pitch? It could have been a 2-56 helicoil tap. I’ve been caught by that one before when I accidently grabbed a helicoil tap and was confused why it seemed larger than what was lasered on it.
It’s possible, but since we never use helicoils, it would be a weird thing to have laying around. I didn’t do any in-depth analysis on the (remaining) threads; I just threw it away and grabbed a new one, which I checked with a #2-56 nut first.
This is what QC exists for though. It costs exponentially more to replace a mislabeled gear with the labor time of email/phone call for support, shipping costs of the return item (they’d probably say just keep the bad one) and then shipping a new one (especially to France!). This would take like 1.5 seconds to check right before they put it in the little baggie. I bet Greg would rather save the money on shipping costs and support time.
It also builds customer trust in the brand, which FRC teams can be fickle and super picky about. Quality matters to us a great deal, some teams win awards for focusing on engineering excellence and mislabeled gears don’t fit that standard.
This would still require every single individual sku/part that REV sells (or at least gear in your proposed case), to pass through human hands, and add 1.5 seconds (per your esitmate) of extra handling time to each individual component REV sells.
I’m not affiliated with REV in any way, nor do i have experience managing QC with such a vast product lineup as REV, but I can’t imagine what you’re proposing would be even remotely economical.
I could definitely see pulling a sample batch of parts every X number produced for inspection, but surely not hand inspecting every single part that REV inventories.
You can test in large batches with a jig, just pull ones that are not the nominal diameter by placing all the gears to be tested in a big cylindrical stack (i.e. in a piece of angle iron) and placing a straightedge across them all.
The bigger question in my mind is how did they get mixed up in the first place.
The economics are gonna be a guess at best by anyone outside of the the companies involved, but labor cost does add up. 1.5 seconds for each gear isn’t small when it’s multiplied by 1000s, but like @Skyehawk said jigging can do batches at a time, just lay a production run on a rail and have essentially an indexer that lays down on it, then you look for a bump in the set to show were the nominal size changes.
However there is a better answer that FRC people should be able to take advantage of. Vision systems. With a calibrated camera as the gears run down a conveyor line measure their diameters, no contact, no extra touching and the line could divert the faulty pieces before they are mislabeled
Not really. This sort of quality control is easily attainable using vibratory feed systems and gates.
I’d wager it could be as simple as height / width gates that the gears slide through. We use that regularly in our machining and assembly operations.
I absolutely agree that there are several methods that could be used to ensure QC with high volumes of parts (width gates or large jigs being 2 of them). The post I was responding to however, explicitly suggested that humans/workers be the one checking each individual gear for compliance; And in that context, I think my comment about it not being economical still stands.
I think we’ve come up with the 2025 FRC game: Gear Gauntlet
Teams retrieve assorted Steamworks-style Gears from a central store on the field and can sort them into alliance specific containers based on their tooth count. The gears are visually similar, but have a range of sizes and are placed in the store randomly. Robots can also deliver them to the hold where human player manually determine the size and reintroduce them, or to get rid of gears teams can’t use. The gears can also be installed on pegs on the sides of the field with a rank point for completing a train of a certain length. There is a co-opertition bonus for alliances joining their drivetrains together.
If you have not already @Federico_9220 please reach out to support and we will replace the gear.
This specific issue which has been seen a handful of times is a frustrating one, and one that is being addressed.
As others in this thread noted, it is not practical or economical to have a human check every laser marking so we need to think smarter about this. For this specific issue in the past, we were relying on our vendors to sort and then laser mark the gears and then we check an assortment according to ISO 2859-1:1999 (aka AQL standards) which is not good at catching these 1-2 issues that might exist in a batch of 2000+ gears.
We believe that this is an issue that come to be during the transition between lasering different sizes of gears, when 1-2 of an old size don’t get marked they mix their way into the new size batch.
Moving forward we will be providing laser jigs for all our vendors with teeth cut outs, so only the proper size gear will fit on the laser to avoid any mis-markings. This is an example of the way that we can think smarter about things without increasing the labor required to do 100% checks.
REV has grown quite a bit in the last several years and we are actively expanding our staff in critical places, quality and testing, so we can continue to improve. I know we will continue to improve but in the meanwhile you can be assured that we will always stand behind our products and make it right with replacements or other remedies when necessary.
Please keep the updates rolling when possible without breaking NDA/giving away trade secrets. It is really informative for the students in the league to learn about mass manufacturing and it builds up our confidence as customers
Seriously love the detail!
Also wanted to say, while frustrating to get a misprinted gear Rev emailed back pretty quick and offered to send 2 in replacement. We only needed the one but it was a nice gesture. It shipped quick too.
