Chain Drive

[team death]

Hi Dave
You might also want to look at our build diary entitled Team Death-New Heavyweight
we cover the pros and cons of sprockets and chains including reducer units for different
ratios.
Your basically correct with your opening sentence, the most important thing
though is the ratio
Eventually we settled for a 8 to 1 which worked very well and I would recommend.
So for every 10 teeth on the motor sprocket you would have 80 teeth on the drive.
Of course in the real world you use a reducer sprocket with 20 teeth so only 40 teeth
are needed on the drive.
This can be quite complicated and that's why many Roboteers settle for gearboxes.


I was forgetting our Robot did have rather large back wheels so if you use
8 inch wheels you would probably get away with 10 teeth on the motor
and 40 on the driven wheel giving a 4 to 1 ratio and no reducer needed.
I woulden't go less than 4 to 1 even if your wheels are smaller than that.