Some time ago I was given some pre-release gears to test. Most were laser cut acrylic, but a few were aluminium and looked like “the real thing”. Initially I just played around and made fun stuff like this steam-engine like contraption:
Then I started playing around and the first thing I made was a geared lifting mechanism for my drawing/cnc robot:
This is the 6:1 gear version. The version I ended up using on the robot was a 9:1 gear that makes it possible to lift quite heavy tools with just a normal stepper:
I’ve recently had to cannibalise the drawing robot for parts, but I’ll rebuild it using 320-beams rather than 504-beams due to limited desktop space. Some of the parts were used for my 3D printer project and today I tried building a Wades Extruder using only Makeblock:
By just adding a tube that guides the filament above and below, you’d have a fully working pinch extruder with a 3.8:1 gear for both 3mm & 1.75mm plastic. I really dig that one can use the 7x9 plate as a stepper mount as well 