Dude, get the degree. Unless you want to do 3D cad of other people's designs all day, get the degree. Although experience goes a long way, I can frankly tell you I would not trust the design expertise of someone without at least a BS in their chosen field. So, you would be stuck one step...
Having an "odd" number of gear teeth also is used to make sure you dont get the exact same gear teeth mating each time.
If there were an imperfection on one tooth on one of the planets, and it kept hitting the same tooth on the ring gear, it could quickly cause a problem on that one...
Just wanted to thank everybody for their enlightening feedback. Unfortunately, I can't tell you if any or all of these solutions worked, beacuse we've ended up going with a completely different transmission method (sprag clutch)! But keep the discussion going -and look out for questions on...
Spurs,
I get something similar happening too, when the idler rides in a straight slot. In my case, I think the teeth of the idler happen to fall on top of the teeth of one of the gears, rather than in the space between teeth. What happens then is that no driving happens, the drive gear spins...
(If you have the Mechanisms amd Mechanical Devices Sourcebok, it's in the section on overrunning clutches, pg 304 in the 2nd edition)
The idler slides in a slot that can be concentric (or even only roughly so) with the drive gear. Therefore, it always remains in some engagment with that gear...
Hi all, I've got a simple transmission: two seperated parallel gears with an idler in between that slides in and out of contact with both gears, thus transferring power from one gear to the other through the idler.
I'd like to lower the noise of the system, and I'm considering the advantages of...
