How do you remove gear inserts?
For free-spinning gear inserts (inside is circle), I poke at the gear insert from the back through the hole in the other insert, sometimes scratching the insert. When I push it far enough, I get the corner of a C channel, plate, etc. under it and pry it off.
For normal gear inserts, however, I don’t know how to reliably get them off. I guess you can make this tool:
but I want another way to do it.
Great question!
My team commonly slides driveshafts in and out of the gears at different angles to poke them out. The friction between the insert and the drive shaft causes the insert to come off.
Hope this helps!
My teammate did something very interesting to solve this. He pulled them out with needle nose pliers.
I use a small flathead and just lever them out.
Needle nose pliers with bumps or texture on them usually grip the insert an pull it out.
I’ve found that the method that works best is to push a shaft into the insert a bit and then wiggle it around. The shaft should not pass through the other side of the wheel because then both inserts are surrounding the shaft.
This method consistently takes less than 15 seconds to remove one insert.