basbase Posted August 23, 2011 Posted August 23, 2011 After building my RoboCam, I wanted to create a car with 4 wheels that uses rack and pinion steering. I also wanted it to include a gearbox with at least 3 different speeds. My first attempt at designing such a gearbox used driving rings and 16 tooth clutches. This proved to be a very inefficient design because with 4 speeds it had a lot of dead gears causing useless friction. This prompted me to design a rather unusual but cool looking gearbox. It shifts gears by lifting and lowering entire gear racks. This minimizes spinning dead gears. Shifting is done using pneumatic cylinders connected to a compressor. The design is modular which makes it easy to add an extra speed to the gearbox or swap gear ratios. It would also be possible to use (mini)LA’s or small pneumatic cylinders. A design with the bottoms of the modules fixed together would also be possible. If there is enough demand for it I will make instructions or demonstrate different setups. Quote
Alasdair Ryan Posted August 23, 2011 Posted August 23, 2011 Nice maybe try to scale it down a bit as it seems a bit big to fit into currant sized mocs, what about putting one on top of the other or removeing some of those gears. nice job Quote
Burf2000 Posted August 24, 2011 Posted August 24, 2011 Thats pretty cool mate, got any pics of how its was made? Quote
basbase Posted August 31, 2011 Author Posted August 31, 2011 Nice maybe try to scale it down a bit as it seems a bit big to fit into currant sized mocs, what about putting one on top of the other or removeing some of those gears. nice job Thanks, I've taken your advise and build a 50% smaller version . It was quite a pain to have 4 different gear ratios in a small space but eventually I figured it out. Thats pretty cool mate, got any pics of how its was made? I dont have any construction photos but I'm working on some MLCad instructions. BTW, here is a video of my first gearbox attempt failing hard: Quote
Sokratesz Posted August 31, 2011 Posted August 31, 2011 That is awesome, and in fact I'm going to steal that design and build it with mini-LA's :D Quote
basbase Posted August 31, 2011 Author Posted August 31, 2011 That is awesome, and in fact I'm going to steal that design and build it with mini-LA's :D That would be sweet, since I don't have the mini-LA's yet and I'm very curious about how well it will perform with those. Quote
Sokratesz Posted August 31, 2011 Posted August 31, 2011 The LA's themselves are nifty little things - I got me a 8069 backhoe with 4 of them in it for just 45 bucks so I might even buy another at that price to get 4 more :) - Sok. Quote
technicmad Posted September 1, 2011 Posted September 1, 2011 I dont have any construction photos but I'm working on some MLCad instructions. If you do I'd be happy to put it on Rebrickable :) Quote
Alasdair Ryan Posted September 1, 2011 Posted September 1, 2011 Your redesigned gearbox is a lot smaller and better. Quote
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