Subject:
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Re: I wish Lego made an "Anti-Backlash Gear"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics, lugnet.technic
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Date:
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Thu, 5 Apr 2001 22:34:50 GMT
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Viewed:
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201 times
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In lugnet.robotics, Jerry Kalpin writes:
> Dean, it's probably dumb luck that the two drives on the piece I'm working
> on have little slack. Yet, with LEGO beams and blocks you can't use every
> gear combination; there are published beam/block/plate combinations that let
> this or that pair of gears mesh. Someone will do that for chain, someday.
Believe me that I have tried a lot of combinations. Also your and my idea
of "little slack" may be quite different. But it is true that I have never
done an exhaustive study on the subject. I usually just give up on getting
it perfect and rig up some sort of chain tensioner.
> There's another thing you should have mentioned: The less chain slack the
> greater the force between shafts and associated friction.
As far as I know, all the available techniques for taking the play out of a
drive train sacrifice efficiency when doing so. The more sophisticated just
do so to a lesser degree. I agree with you that this is really noticable
with a chain. Especially when the load is great enough that shafts start to
bend and the sprockes no longer reside in the same plane.
It's really hard for me to fault Lego for the sloppy mesh of their gears.
Not when you consider their per unit price. I imagine that some of the slop
is intentional for purposes of reducing friction. We are working with puny
little motors after all. If you wan't to limit backlash, just use the big
gears and remember it is a building "toy".
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | RE: I wish Lego made an "Anti-Backlash Gear"
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| (...) It's not the unit price, but the primary motivation for Lego products: It's a toy for kids. Yes, it has found some applications in education and amateur robotics, but it's still a toy. To build exact mechanisms, you not only have to deal with (...) (24 years ago, 6-Apr-01, to lugnet.robotics)
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