Pros and cons to these?
Thick gears are wider than sprockets but more secure as sprockets can suddenly lose their chain and become useless. Sprockets can reach far distances without idler gears (although these do help provide tension) however and can also wrap around things.
normal gears are thinner but if not secured correctly, can easily slip and the grinding sound they make hurts my ears and soul
thoughts on like friction or anything else?
i would chose sprockets every day of the week.
it is much more difficult for the chain to slip and if necessary then do two lengths of it so if one breaks the other can run your mechanisms
sprockets and chains get caught on stuff, but if properly shielded from the field by all means use them (for the drive mechanism) for mogo lifts, DR4Bs, and claws use gears. Also, if you can use the small metal gears when you need a small gear, use them. The plastic ones are really fragile.
+1…Wait +2…Hmm +999999999
And what about the High Strength Chains?
they are good
But they are wide
about the same as HS gears
If you are trying to choose between the 2 for a subsystem, then I have an answer: It 100% depends of the application. If it’s for a drive, it’s far simpler to use a sprocket and chain loop to link 2 wheels (although you might have some slop), whereas you would have to make an entire gear train going from front to back (You might lose a bit of power to friction), which isn’t as efficient as using a sprocket and chain loop (6007X might disagree with me here).
Conversely, if you are talking about a lift like a DR4B, there is no reason to use chain. You want as little slop as possible to keep the 2 sections of the lift moving in sync and not wobbly, so the best option in this scenario is gears.
What @NightsRosario said. The only other thing to be aware of is doing autonomous programming with a drive base and chains really needs sensors at the wheels. Unless your wheels are close so the chain run is short AND you are only driving a short distance programming with IME’s won’t be accurate enough. (And we all know that just driving for “time” doesn’t work, gears or sprockets.
Also, a set of two meshed gears will reverse the direction of the power, while a set of 2 sprockets connected with chain will conserve the direction of power. In other words, you’ll just have to reverse the motor direction with an even number of gears, just keep this in mind
Gears are much better for short distances with less slack and less friction then chain. For long distances use chain.