Video tutorials

In part 1 of How to on Gears tutorial I introduced you to the basics of the gear systems. Now we are going to examinate gear systems with more than two gears and take a look at cascade gear systems.

Gears could be a powerful tool for those who know how to use them appropriately. In this episode we introduce some of the basic terms and concepts behind using gears in your construction.

We are describing the Warm gear in this video. This worm gear does most of the magic of controlling how the different gear wheels move on the different axles. 

In this episode we continue from Episode 55 and we improve the durability and stability of the attachment for a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot. Many times attachments are not very stable which results in gaps between parts. The goal of the video is to give basic construction ideas.

In this video lesson I am building a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 active attachment powered by a small gear wheel. The attachment could move up and down, it is very useful for collecting objects. It could easily be adapted and used on other robots.

We are making a parallel with Video Lesson 56 from the series and we are also showing ways to improve the stability of an axle which is most of the time neglected, but could lead to great problems.

How to align the wheels and how much should you push for this solution?

In this episode we build a reusable attachment for a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robot that changes gears orientation and direction. It is one of the most useful attachments that you could use to move levers up/down and right/left. Adding the attachment on the robot takes 2-3 seconds and shows a very useful general principle of how to build reusable attachments.

Part three of the Catapult series is about loading the catapult automatically. We use a gear system with a medium complexity along with a very interesting "clutch" developed with parts entirely from the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kits. As a result, at the end of the video, the Catapult automatically loads and fires.

We calculate the number of rotatios when a gear system is involved. The driving wheel will have to do a number of rotations for the driven wheel to rotate to a desired number of degrees. In our specific case when the driven gear wheel is rotate to about 90 degrees the legs will lift the robot.

Part four of the Catapult series is again about loading the catapult automatically but this time using EV3 brick, motor and sensor. We use a gear system with a medium complexity along with a "standard clutch" available in the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kits. As a result, at the end of the video, the Catapult loads and fires automatically.

Build a similar mechanism to this one. Similar, but for your robot. This is the task for you. Try, give yourself half and hour or even an hour.

There were a few problems with the 40 teeth gears that we were using. Let's list some of them

What should you do as a teacher when the students are calculating the gear ratios and number of needed rotations?

In the previous video, we found the correct answer for our task and it is 18.75, or is it?

Time to lift the robot. The first approach is by using the 40 teeth gear wheels that come with the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 and NXT robotics sets.