Planetary gears

There's this cutaway drawing I made using Windows Paint that as far as I know is the only one.

If i had accurate data i could CAD it up.

I have done CAD on many occasions in the past but havent done it for a couple of years now.

The biggest issue i have is the dimensions/angles of the teeth.

However this is a CAD drawing of a part of a planetary gearbox for a Sinclair C5 that i made about 10 years ago.

It is only as accurate as the digital micrometer that i was using at the time.

As i have a gearbox in parts - I could have a go at this (it'll take my mind off the other problems i have on my bike currently)

Besides I actually enjoy cad work.

However, please dont expect anything as complex as the entire gearbox in less than a few weeks.

Don't forget that there are slightly different versions of the VX-1 gearbox, they are not all the same.

Maybe the planetary gears are all the same, maybe not.

The only 'obvious' variation that i could see was the manufacture/fitment of the ring gear

Please see the two gearboxes below.

That design looks so incredibly simple. Surely it should last forever! Amazing simplicity on a bike that seems so otherwise complex.

Incredibly simply yet seemingly poorly manufactured all things considered.

I agree completely with the "well designed, badly manufactured". I have 2 working Vs and one scrap for parts, these bikes were all manufactured within a month of each other and the gearboxes are very diiferent, my red bike has 23k on it and has the quietest box, the green one has the fighting cats syndrome on decell and a very anoying chorus at around 60kmh (unfortunatly a speed it speends a lot of time doing). The silver one I have striped for parts and I have spent some time in the gearbox, It had 6k on the clock when it was cremated.
So.
I believe there is no way to fix the bad manufacturing so we have to come up with a system that is tollerant to the massive trolerance variation. I believe the easiest way is to replace the three planet gears with some well designed composite gears with dimentions that accomodate the various ring gears and be quiet.

The material looks to be based on PEEK (Poly ethyl ethyl keytone). the good gear (no pun) looks to be Ketron CF30, this is PEEK renforced with carbon fibre. This has a shear strength of over 18000psi. I don't have the maths to calculate the loading on these gears but my old aero prop formulas seem to indicate these gears are drastically over strong now..

All Great so far...But there is always a catch.

Some local CadCam guys want A$700 to develop a 3D CadCam (3D scanned and touched up) drawing to machining quality from a physical gear (and even then this will need tweaking to accomodate variation in ring gear sizing and eccentricity). But hey $700 bucks is not a big deal if a few of us got togeather...

But wait, there is more..

The dam gear is about 76MM outer diameter. so it can't be machined from 75mm round stock, so it needs to be 80mm, or probably bigger. And I can't find this as yet as a stock item.

But the big killer is....Even the Ketron CF30 50mm round stock is...$540US plus freight a foot (gears are about 20mm wide, so abour 9 per foot...and I guess the 80mm stock would be mearly $1000 per foot.

This makes these gears about $400 a set cost depending on development and protoyping costs and production run numbers.

So for now, I just turn the ipod up a bit on longer rides....

Sorry for the delay with the CAD, as i havent used it for so long - had to find my software and get it installed - then tried installing it in Linux (which isnt too friendly with win32 things) and that hasnt worked. Now i have it running and have measured up one of my gears - hopefully will have something for conversation in the next few days. But its bee a busy week. Got chickens coming at the weekend and had to build a coop. Plus rebuilt my VX-1 today so its been all go (more on that in a different post)

Hi - as much as I know of gears (I am not a professional gear designer/developer!!) - I have tried it.

This is what I came up with. However, BE CAREFUL = 100th of Millimeters matter!!
I could upload a STEP or STL - yet, how do I upload?

So not true!! Look at the details of my photo - it is a manufacturing issue - "The Good, the Bad, and the ugly"

At some point these shitty gears found their way into the gear box.
I hope the resolution is high enough the see the details on the teeth of the 2 planets. Both of them have roughly 20.000km wear on them. Not only is the green one an example of good manufacuring, it is also 0.03mm wider in diameter - that is exactly what makes the difference.

The planet gear: involute - very regular:

preassure angle NOT 30 but 14.5 instead (read through documentation about the preassure angle of gears)

I think the Circles should be: base 71.75, outer 76.75, inner 67.55 (millimeters)

Number of Teeth (PRIMENUMBERS!!) 41

Module 1.75

How about FreeCAD or lately the Siemens Solide Edge (free!)

I believe the bearing sleeve (1 for each planet) is to thin - 0.02mm to thin? It is not the CNC machining - it is the work afterwards = polishing the surface.....

Hello,

Same question! Does anyone have VX1 gears CAD files?

Thank you!

VX1 's not dead!

Did you ever upload the step files or other format of the Vectrix planetary gears?