Behold A Geared, Continuously Variable Transmission

When it comes to transmissions, a geared continuously-variable transmission (CVT) is a bit of a holy grail. CVTs allow smooth on-the-fly adjustment of gear ratios to maintain a target speed or powe…

Lathe Outfitted With Electronic Gearbox

Running a metal lathe is not for the faint of heart. Without proper knowledge and preparation, these machines can quickly cause injury or destroy expensive stock, tools, or parts. The other major p…

Magnetic Gearbox, Part 2: Axial Flux Improves Performance

The number of interesting and innovative mechanisms that 3D printing has enabled always fascinates us, and it’s always a treat when one of them shows up in our feeds. This axial flux magnetic…

A Look Inside Bicycle Gearboxes

While bicycle gearboxes date back to at least the 1920s, they’re relatively unseen in bike racing. One exception is Honda’s race-winning mid-drive gearboxes, and [Alee Denham] gives us …

Cut Your Own Gears With This DIY Machine

You can buy gears off the shelf, of course, and get accurately machined parts exactly to your chosen specification. However, there’s something rugged and individualist about producing your ow…

Magnetic Gearbox Design Improvements Are Toothless But Still Cool

Any project that contains something called a “flux modulator” instantly commands our attention. And while we’re pretty sure that [Retsetman] didn’t invent it after hitting h…

3D Printed Strain-Wave Gearbox Turns Up The Torque

3D printers are good for a lot of things, but making parts for power transmission doesn’t seem to be one of them. Oh sure, some light-duty gears and timing belt sprockets will work just fine …

Stackable 3D-Printed Gearbox For Brushless Motor

Affordable brushless motors are great for a variety of motion applications, but often require a gearbox to tame their speed. [Michael Rechtin] decided to try his hand at designing a stackable plane…

3D-Printed Gear Press Can Squash Stuff, Kinda

A press is a useful thing to have, whether you like destroying stuff or you simply want to properly install some bearings. [Retsetman] decided to build one from scratch, eschewing the typical hydra…

Shredder Rebuilt From The Ashes, Aims To Produce More Ashes

What do you do when you buy a broken shredder and, upon disassembly, find its gears in pieces? You might reach towards your 3D printer – this one’s not that kind of shredder, however. […

Tracked RC Vehicle Is (Mostly) 3D Printed

While wheels might seem like a foundational technology, they do have one major flaw: they typically need maintained roads in order to work. Anyone who has experience driving a Jeep or truck off-roa…

Autonomous Mower Hits Snag

Interfacing technology and electronics with the real world is often fairly tricky. Complexity and edge cases work their way in to every corner of a project like this; just ask anyone who has ever t…

Resin-Printed Gears Versus PLA: Which Is Tougher?

When it comes to making gearboxes, 3D printing has the benefit that it lets you whip up whatever strange gears you might need without a whole lot of hunting around at obscure gear suppliers. This i…

Keynote Video: Jeremy Fielding Wants To Help You Get Moving

For many DIY hardware projects, the most movement it’s likely to see is when we pick the assembled unit up off the workbench and carry it to wherever it’s destined to spend the rest of …

Cheap Big Servo For Robot Arm

[Skyentific] is looking to push the hobbyist robotics state of the art. Motors and their gears, the actuators, are typically the most expensive part. For his build, he realised he needed big servos…

A Simple LEGO Automatic Transmission

The automatic transmission in your average automobile can be a complicated, hydraulic-y thing full of spooky fluids and many spinning parts. However, simpler designs for “automatic” gea…

Differential Drive Doesn’t Quite Work As Expected

Placing two motors together in a shared drive is a simple enough task. By using something like a chain or a belt to couple them, or even placing them on the same shaft, the torque can be effectivel…

A Stackable Planetary Gearbox You Can Print At Home

In one little corner of YouTube is a small but vibrant community sharing videos about gearboxes of their own design, particularly those with very high ratios or other quirky features. Adherents of …

Testing 3D Printed Worm Gears

Worm gears are great if you have a low-speed, high-torque application in which you don’t need to backdrive. [Let’s Print] decided to see if they could print their own worm gear drives t…