What's the general consensus about gear drive?

Well I’m asking about the noise since I believe the jed board uses gears and is super noisy (probably the noisiest complete esk8 on the market imo) and I’m not sure if it’s the gears or the motor. I’ve personally heard inrunners in rc planes and they’re very high pitched so I don’t know how it translate to esk8 in terms of noise

Looks like they’re almost touching the hanger so 50mm is probably the biggest your can fit and they’re mounted on evolve trucks so I’m not sure how it’s gonna translate to other trucks

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@Idea is also on top of this game with some interesting gear drive sistems.

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Looks pretty amazing.

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In terms of gear drive I don’t think the type of motor affects the sound much if at all as it still engages with the gears the same way which imo will be significantly more audible than the motor regardless if inrunner or outrunner

Edit: Even with the top notch Helicals that @nowind produces I still think that sound does come from the gears albeit way way less audible.

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Yes I mentioned that just a few posts up :wink:

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… it makes a sound like a cat in a grinder :slight_smile:

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I don’t know why but I find it similar to Formula E sounds lol

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The JED Board WAS noisy AF, but that was there first models. They’ve made a ton of new iterations, and I’m almost positive they are now using helical gears, so I’m actually very interested to see how the Jed Board turns out when they finally release it, lol! I think this is a pic of theirs from their Instagram, someone please correct me if I’m wrong :slight_smile:

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So sweet :heart_eyes:

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that looks promising! Last I heard of them they were still working out the remote? I personally dont think it ergonomic with that weird original design they had using the ink display. looking forward to see how efficient their motors are gonna be on the 4WD too. I don’t think I’ve seen any 4wd gear drives yet

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Every iteration I’ve seen (preproduction of a preproduction of a preproduction …) was noisy af.

Well the most recent posts I saw on either their IG or FB, I’m not sure exactly which, but I saw some video of them, and they were much quieter than before. @captainjez works at Jed Boards, so maybe we can get him to chime in on their latest iteration, and how noisy / silent it is :smile:

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Here’s a couple of facts for you guys wanting gear drives that I’ve learned from the mechanical engineers I work with

  1. They are all gonna be loud unless you seal the drive train and use lubricants.
  2. Helical is quieter than spur, but not by much. It’s also much weaker as the stress is localized to individual portions of the tooth whereas spur gears spread the stress across the entire tooth.
  3. A case is almost irrelevant unless its sealed and you are using lubricants. It increases the cost a ton and only protects the gears from debris and intrusions. In my experience you are no more likely to have a hard stop from debris than you are with a belt drive system.
  4. Gears will produce more torque using less power, than the corresponding belt drive system.
  5. When using an idler gear make sure there is plenty of mass to dissipate heat as the idler gear will produce twice as much heat as a wheel or motor gear. If you let it get too hot, your bearing lubricants will burn up and eat the bearings. If you can avoid using an idler gear, do that.
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Thanks for the great insight! I didn’t know the idlers would generate that much more heat. Also on your 3rd point, when you mention that you’re no more likely to have a hard stop from debris with gears than on a belt drive is assuming there is no case? otherwise gear drives don’t have to worry about debris in that sense?

I recently placed my order for @kug3lis fatboy mini and I hope to get a similar experience to your build too!

I also thought that helicals did not suffer any differences of stress on the tooth as compared to spur but that means I still have to read up alot more.

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Wow, thanks I never even thought about the heat issue on the idler gear… We’ll have to come up with some good ideas on how to deal with that…

We plan on making a fully sealed case with lubrication, but why is that ‘a ton more’? I understand the extra cost of machining the parts, but I don’t see how that’ll be a significant amount more than just a sealed case as opposed to a fully sealed case filled with lubricants?

We’ve always used helical gears. They’re tricky to get right and you do have the issue of axial thrust which you don’t get with a spur gear or herringbone. We’ve done a lot of work on noise reduction and the boards are near silent below 20km/hr now.

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Yes, that is assuming no case, just a regular motor mount with spur gears instead of pulleys and belts.

Honestly, I did too. It made sense to me that helical gears, being more complicated to manufacture would have some benefit to offset the cost. I assumed that benefit would be strength. Turns out the benefit is the turn is more precise and that is pretty much it. It is a little quieter, but I think only by 10-15% in our application.

That is a guess, just want to be clear about that. I’ve only done limited testing as the production cost is way to high for the benefit, just my opinion.

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Yeah I was pretty sure I read on your IG that you’ve reduced the sound of your drives dramatically. Do you have any recent video with the newest drives running so we can hear how silent they are now?

Will be posting some this week along with revised range tests with our new battery system.

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There’s a lot of math behind helical gears and they have several advantages over spur gears in all our testing. Wear is something we’ve not had any issues with, but our gears are made from hardened carbon steel. We had issues with spur gears shredding a lot when we tested them.

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