I got the advanced gear kit a few days ago and I can’t figure out how to use the worm gears with the little gears they are supposed to go with. I can get one attached but then the other one doesn’t line up. What am I doing wrong? Help please. It would cut down on a lot of space with all of the gears on my robot’s arm.
The ones they show in the inventors guide to use with them. The ones that have teeth that are slightly angled to better mesh with the worm gear. I think.
Good answer - Unfortunately I was guessing that you might have been trying to get the 12 tooth spur gears to mate up instead of the 24 tooth worm wheels. I’m now out of guesses.
If you can take a digital snapshot of your current configuration, do so and upload it. Someone should be able to take a look at it and give you advice.
I think the issue you’re referring to is the 1/4" spacing the worm reduction requires, as opposed to the standard 1/2" spacing. Unfortunately, I think the only way to mesh the worm gear with the helical gear is to use the worm-specific gearbox, which is designed with those spacings. Our team was going to use worm gears on our arm until we put them on and realized the gears didn’t reach each other.
I think it needs to be made a bit clearer that you really need the gearbox or some of the new 1/4" spacing stuff to really use the worm gear. it may be written somewhere but i didn’t notice.
But it isn’t required. I used the worm gears for several projects before I got the gearbox, and I haven’t needed the 1/4" pitch metal for this at all. It does take some creative placement, but nothing extraordinary.
That being said, I would love to see some larger-diameter worm gears that work well with standard 1/2" pitch mounting, and with holes in the gear to strongly attach metal arms and/or lock bars. The current worm gears transfer all their power through the axle only, which introduces play and is a weak point.
I adapted a Vex gear to work with a very powerful surplus 12-Volt Buehler DC Motor that has a sturdy brass worm gear and it matched perfectly! I plan to use it for moving a tilt/pan platform and a larger DIY train engine.
Spacers mostly, or using the 1/4" offset holes in many of the chassis rail pieces. There are some old pictures up here and here of a claw that was worm-driven. I’ve also used the worm gear set to make a crawler (strong but slow tank drive) and a few other random mechanisms, but nothing else I have pictures of.