Team Bitza

[Ellis]

Looks good but honestly, people using standard drill-based gearboxes for such weapons will forever have problems. They break in drive setups, the shocks a lifter arm sees are different but possibly a lot greater. Think 720 hitting the arm as you're bringing it down, torque of the motor fighting the massive impact shock going in the opposition direction, or it landing from a 6ft flip onto the arena wall.

It may sound like I'm just being cynical but, either the motor pinion will come loose and jam, the second stage gears will strip, or (most likely) the pins will fail on the second stage resulting in it promptly killing itself. Look at the relentless problems people are getting with such gearboxes in axe weapons.

You can probably soften some of the huge impacts with a torque limiter such as the one a drill has installed, but you'll lose performance. A Gimson, unless it's belt driven and has some decent slip, will almost certainly fail.

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There are definitely ways to improve these issues, however. You can put a flat on the motor and use a pinion with a D shaped bore, and you can prevent the second stage pins from coming loose with some tricks. We are doing this in Tormenta 2's drive and finally, after forever, we're seeing some reliability.

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I don't mean to burst any bubbles, I'm just going by experience of using drills since the beginning. :P

You can still use a 550 motor with a tougher gearbox as the problems almost always arise from the transmission. Banebots come to mind.

Or you could use a larger motor (lifting anything at speed with a 550 is always going to be interesting), such as a scooter motor or similar. A fraction of the reduction needed and worlds more robust. I realise I say this with a drill behind our weapon, but it's one big drill.

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My 2 cents. I like the design. Next 4WD type thing we build will also most likely have big wheels, I love that look. I'm sure you'll get the current setup working reliably with time but I'm just trying to prevent some headaches.