technic lego robustivity

I've dug away on this subject for a short while, but not found anything that answers my questions satisfactorily, so I'm risking some flamage to get one =)

Has anyone tested the techinc lego cogs and gears to destruction yet? How to they hold up to heat and torque? I'm planning a walker, but to get any kind of speed the gearings pretty mad, and it'll probably not be a pusher with the resulting drop in torque, I'm just curious to know if i'll be needing to replace lost of melted gears or opt for a plan b.

Any feedback would be useful, thanks guys :wink:

i do know jonny meted some due to friction in a walker but they may be fine if you dont stress them to much. welcome to the forum btw

yep, i have indeed melted them dues to friction in one of my walker prototypes which used some very old lego motors at 12v. you'll probably be fine using them in an antweight with gearmotors though. i've used some on gearmotors for a 4 wheel drivetrain in an ant before with no melting although i only used it for a few minuites and didn't stress it much.

thanks gents (and for the welcome!)

I'll probably do a test off the back of the info to see how hard I can push my concept till it dribbles off the arena =)

I'll try and get a concept design up some so you can all ogle in its glorious awesomeness :wink:
When I can get some free time around work that is. It's a bit mad.

Thanks again.

wouldnt advise a walker for your first robot(is it your first?) go simple, realy simple

It is my first robot, but it's not my first foray into mechanics (all be it with wood and elastic!), so I'm cautiously confident. If it all all goes belly up then I'm pretty certain I can back track with the parts I have in mind. It's a pretty simple crank drive walker, but it has a lot of surface friction.

To be honest there are still plenty of questions I need to answer on the pet project, what material for it's chasis/armour is my primary concern now. As a pusher, it needs to be quite rugged but I've never really worked metal before, or know the qualities of materials like aluminium are =/

So its still very much in its concept stage as you can see =)

go for polycarbonate of hpde, VERY easy to work with and fairly cheap if you want more info google robot wars 101 that is an antweight forum which you may find useful. good luck 8)

thanks harry =)