Get in Gear (Investigation)

Mr. Inskeep gave us two questions to work on.

1. What would happen if you made your driving gear bigger and your driven gear smaller ?

If my driving gear is bigger than my driven gear, what would happen is that when the driving gear rotates a certain number of time, the driven gear rotates more, proportional to the number of time. This can speed up the robot. For instance, suppose the driving gear has 36 teeth and the driven gear 12. Then time taken for the driving gear to rotate once is equal to the one for the driven gear to rotate 3 times. The robot with this setting is 3 times faster than the robot with the same number of teeth of a driving gear and a driven gear. However, if the driving gear is bigger than the driven gear, torque decreases. This small torque causes the robot to struggle when it climbs up inclined surface.

2. What would happen if you made your driven gear bigger and your driving gear smaller ?

If my driven gear is bigger than my driving gear, what would happen is that when the driving gear rotates a certain number of time, the driven gear rotates less, proportional to the number of time. This can slow down the robot. For example, suppose the driving gear has 12 teeth and the driven gear 36. Then time taken for the driving gear to rotate 3 times is euql to the one for the driven gear to rotate once. The robot with this setting is 3 times slower than the robot with the same number of teeth of a driving gear and a driven gear. However, if the driving gear is smaller than the driven gear, torque increases. This big torque causes the robot not to struggle when it climbs up inclined surface.

Just for your information, the left gear is the driving gear and the right the driven gear.