Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Gear perving


ABC Gears
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker
Will you look at the quality of this gearbox !

Oooooooh, it's loooverly. Thick brass sides encasing high quality, accurately cut gears all beautifully meshed. Even a spiral cut first stage and all mounted on a Portescap motor. I suspect there are mechanism fetishists out there who have drooled all over their keyboard.

And yes, it runs as well as it looks.

For the technical, this is an ABC models gearbox, I think one of their units designed for O gauge as the locomotive is designed around 7mm technology. It's tiny for the space available but unless you want to stuff a washing machine motor in, then that's going to happen in the cavernous interior of the Ruston.

As a test, I put the wheels and mechanicals into the bare chassis and using a slightly flat 9V battery, had it perform a circuit of the garden railway at walking pace. If I'd wanted slower then 3V from a pair of AA batteries was more than enough to turn the wheels.

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