How important are gears?

[George_TeamZog]

All,

Sorry for the lack of activity (Both on the forum front and the Live front) - School has gotten in the way multiple times. I hope to be at events in the near future.

Anyway, just how important is it to run the wheels via gears? Can I just run them from the motor? As I've got two wheelchair wheels and some cordless drill motors, and I hope the I don't have to buy a ton of gears (which I have little knowledge about - I know about ratios etc, just setting them up is the issue).

It is possible, right?

[archie2000]

if you do here's a website

[harry hills]

you have to have some form of reduction from the motors. if the drills have the gearboxes still on, fine, and the same goes for wheelchair motors.

nice avatar

[craig_colliass]

Try starting with the question how fast do i want the robot to go? from there you can work out how fast (rpm) the drive wheels need to go and from that work out the reduction ratio for the motor drive.

[archie2000]

oh poo
http://www.hpcgears.com/
there's the website