Back in the days before the “double wide gears” and the metal 12 tooth gears, I would double up gears placing them side by side to give a wider face. This helped distribute the load on each gear tooth and reduce the number of teeth snapped off on gears.
I’m building a device with an arm. In the process I noticed that the blue gears and the old “classic” gears don’t line up the same way on the shaft. Take any of the 12, 36 or 60 classic colored gears and put a blue one next to them. Notice how the teeth don’t line up?
While I love the new colors, are all the new colors the same with the relationship to the shaft and the teeth? Is the only outlier the classic gears? Or is there a difference between others of the new color?
I haven’t looked at this, but I very strongly suspect all the new gears are the same. VEX puts a great deal of thought into things like this, so I’m sure there’s a reason for the change.
When the switch from maroon to blue kits was made in 2014, the 12, 36, and 60 Tooth Gear part designs were revised with several minor improvements at the same time. All gears made after the maroon switch have better gear tooth profiles, counterbored shaft holes (to allow use with the snap shaft Idler Pins), better alignment of the shaft hole to mounting pin holes and gear teeth, and the 36 Tooth Gears include 4 additional mounting holes. The old maroon gears are the outliers.
Gears made after this switch will be aligned with each other if used on the same shaft, such as for doubled-up gearing.