During Nothing But Net season we have experienced unusually large number of damaged 12/49 cluster gears. Whether due to the specific flywheel shock loads or due to the newer output stage gears have much thinner 33t profile, but 12t surface seems to go first.
It feels somewhat a waste to buy entire refub kit (276-2487) just to replace a single gear. It would be great if you could either provide an additional 12/49 gears in every refub kit or sell a separate package containing only those gears.
This thread somewhat goes along with another that was suggesting that the IME gears be sold individually in packs so that if they were damaged, they could be replaced without purchasing new IMEs. Obviously in this case the refurb gear kits are far less expensive than IMEs, but the concept is there. I really don’t think vex would be interested in producing a certain set of gearing in a 4 pack or something of the sort, but I agree that it would be nice to have. We were running the flywheel a week or two back and heard the dreadful click and just as I’d thought, it was these gears that gave out.
I’d buy 6 packs of these in an instant. I have the gears to replace the new thinner profile with the thicker profile (I like the old gear better and it clicks less). I’m beginning to hear the click of death on my flywheel just because we have increased moment on inertia which causes spin downs to click a little at the end in one or two motors. This is the only gear I’ve seen break in any motors and last year destroyed 6 or 7 of these.
I experienced the same problem. On my base motors and intake. I wonder if Vex cheaped out on the quality of their metal this season. Last year I didn’t hear of this at all
They have used the same products for years… This year speed of drives, fly wheels, and intakes are at a high, and I assume the GDC had some idea of this happening while they were planning this game