GearHeads Corner

Hi All:

In the latest version , in the program Spur, you will find a button to switch to planetary gear mode, where you can design the dxf files to be used in programs such as Fusion 360 to design a split ring planetary gearbox of various ratios and diameters. I will be adding a video shortly to explain how it works, and how it can be used to deign hi ratio stepdown gearboxes such as the one in the photo, which is 51:1 , being driven with a small gimble motor as a test. This module does not generate any stl's, it is used only to generate the dxf's for use in building the rest in whatever CAD you wish to use. I use Fusion 360 and it wasn't hard to design the one shown, which is small as I wished to press my luck.

Regards
Art

For anyone curious:

By the way, the motor is called a RollerCan , from m5 stack. I got a couple because they intrigued me, they are FOC motors, will run from 3.5vdc to 16VDC and even at 5 volts have a fair spring to them. It is CanBus or I2c controlled and the esp32 in the photo is just a bridge to my pc so I can send commands serially. In position mode they act like a spring, you can set the pid loop to any power for that spring, as it tries to move to commanded position. They also have speed and current modes, an encoder is built in. My thought was perhaps embedded in vanes for controlled kinetics where the spring locations and power change dynamically.
The planetary was an experiment to see just how much torque I could get from such a tiny low current motor, while it has 16 watts of power if connected to a power supply, mine is currently running just on the ESP32's 5 volt output at about 100ma, so .5 watts of power, yet it turns a 50:1 planetary just fine.. I accidently used the esp32's 3.5volt at first, and it worked fine there as well. Go figure..

Art

Hi Art,

I have downloaded the latest version, but there is no button to switch to planetary.

Regards
Niels

Hi,

Art's answer was: "delete the old spur programm before installing ..."

Now it works very well.

Thank you very much.
Niels