Need help with gears

[Pat-Ard]

Hi Folks,

for my new MOC I need some help of you. I need a gear which could be used for changing the turning direction of an axle. The main axle comes from the left and turns clockwise. In one position of the gear switcher the axle to the right turn clockwise, too. The other postion lets the SAME axle turn counter clockwise. And both axles (left and right) have to be in line!

Does anyone have an idea?

So far

Pat

[Saberwing40k]

Okay, they have to be in line. That's going to be a bit of a problem. If you have space on either side, you can have a mechanism with a transmission drive ring, and clutch gears, sorta like this:

Also, it would help a lot if you would kindly specify why it has to be in line.

[Pat-Ard]

Hi,

thanks for your idea...

They have to be inline, because I want to build an allwheel steering, but I want to have the posibillity to change between normal allwheel steering and crabsteering. And to make it all a little harder, there's not really much space...

Best would be, if the steering of one axle would be switched off when the transmission ringis in neutral position.

Thanks again

Pat

[GuiliuG]

Don't use a driving ring and chang over catch, they create lot of slack,not wishable in a steering system. I would use a translation system with 3 gears in one mod and two in the second ( as showed above).

[Tamas Juhasz]

I also made some "direction changer" about a week ago:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=5575579

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=5575580

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=5575442

The last one with the chain is only ineteresting, not so usable.

Edited August 20, 2012 by Mbmc

[Hopey]

I assume that whatever you're creating is IR controlled? Rather than doing it with gears, you could do it with the directional switches on the remote.

i.e. have a separate motor for steering each axle. Connect both to an IR receiver, one on each channel.

On the remote, fix the two controls for that IR receiver together, so that turning a wheel or whatever moves both levers the same way.

Both directional switches the same = reguar steering.

One direction changed = crab steering.

Might take up less space, too.

[GuiliuG]

@Hopey : your solution will work only with servo-motor. M motor doesn't turn at the same speed,so after a little play with your MOC, wheels won't be able to align correctly. I have already tried this solution and it doens't work well.

[Hopey]

@Hopey : your solution will work only with servo-motor. M motor doesn't turn at the same speed,so after a little play with your MOC, wheels won't be able to align correctly. I have already tried this solution and it doens't work well.

Not entirely sure what you mean about them turning at the same speed, but I think it'd work if you had a decent return-to-centre system. I agree that the two would quickly get misaligned if it wasn't return-to-centre.

However, in my eperience it's difficult to get return-to-centre to work well (using shock absorbers or elastic bands) for anything but very small MOCs; on a largish model (e.g. 9398) the amount of spring force you need to get it to reliably return to center is too much for the M motor to work against.

[Pat-Ard]

Hi there,

thanks for your help... I'll check each if it's useable.

@Hopey: no, it's not IR controlled...

Pat