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Gear Ratio Calculator 2.1 released

March 11th, 2011 Leave a comment Go to comments

My gear ratio calculator has been updated.

It’s been almost exactly a year since my Gear Ratio Calculator 2 has been released, and this year has shown that there is still plenty of room for improvement. So, the Calculator has been updated to a 2.1 version, which includes following changes:

  • images of gears and motors are replaced with more realistic, clearer ones
  • colour scheme updated to meet the current LEGO standard (e.g. tan single bevel gears)
  • number of teeth shown at the images of gears
  • gear 20 teeth bevel with a pin hole added
  • newer 4 studs wide differential split into two items: one treated as a 16 teeth gear, the other treated as a 24 teeth gear
  • lists of gears & motors are 8 items wide
  • improved contrast and visibility of important elements
  • “add another pair of gears” link replaced with a large graphic button
  • I have created a new, LEGO Technic-themed loading image for the Calculator: 

There are, however, still two problems left. The functioning of the Calculator is heavily based on JavaScript (or jQuery, to be specific), which is run client-side, and it appears that certain web browsers may affect it. As far as I could test it, the Calculator works best under Mozilla Firefox. With other browsers, the input:output ratio is sometimes shown the other way around (output:input), and the overall gear ratio sometimes is not updated when some changes are made. Since these issues appear to be browser-specific, I have not yet been able to solve them. Perhaps the problem will be identified more clearly in the future.

Gear Ratio Calculator 2.1 »

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  1. Sander
    April 11th, 2014 at 13:10 | #1

    @Sariel
    Well…. shouldn’t (or couldn’t) it be??? In a gearbox with 24-12, 20-16, 16-20 and 12-24 couplings: a 28-8 (and/or 8-28) seems a great addition. Unless it isn’t possible.

  2. Sariel
    April 11th, 2014 at 12:30 | #2

    @Sander
    No, it’s not there.

  3. Sander
    April 11th, 2014 at 11:00 | #3

    I meant in the gear coupler area. Sure, it’s available in the ‘coupler’ part, but it doesn’t seem to appear in the bottom section…

  4. Sariel
    April 10th, 2014 at 13:40 | #4

    @Sander
    Of course it includes the 28-tooth differential. It’s right next to the other two differentials.

  5. Sander
    April 10th, 2014 at 12:27 | #5

    Hi Pavel,
    It looks like your calculator does not use the 28 teeth old dif gear. Is that right? It seems that the distance travelled via a 16 to 20 gear (offset 2 hor and 1 vert) should be the same for an old differential and a small 8-tooth gear. So, is my analysis faulty, or did you just not include the old dif gear in your calculations?

  6. Sariel
    October 13th, 2013 at 00:47 | #6

    @smart
    This is obviously not possible. You won’t get an accurate result, because speed depends on the weight of the vehicle, softness of tires, type of surface you’re driving on, and a dozen other things.

  7. smart
    October 13th, 2013 at 00:29 | #7

    Hi, great tool.
    Do you think about calculating the speed on tire, too?
    I think is a nice feature to choose a tire and get the maximum speed.
    Thanks.

  8. qwertyuiop
    January 31st, 2012 at 07:58 | #8

    i have a mac, so yes

  9. Sariel
    January 29th, 2012 at 23:42 | #9

    @qwertyuiop
    So people actually use Safari?

  10. qwertyuiop
    January 29th, 2012 at 23:27 | #10

    just a minor glitch i noticed, probably browser related (i am using safari), but when i select either one of the turntables as a gear, i cannot change them to any other gear afterwards unless i remove the pair of gears or reload the page. has anyone else noticed this?

  11. Marcel
    January 2nd, 2012 at 18:30 | #11

    This is going on my bookmarks bar!!

  12. Marcel
    January 2nd, 2012 at 18:28 | #12

    I love this!!!!!!!

  13. Sariel
    March 18th, 2011 at 03:33 | #13

    @willis dee
    Circumference.

  14. willis dee
    March 18th, 2011 at 03:17 | #14

    Now the tires (if you’re making a car/truck) are the actual last gears in a series, so when you calculate gear ratios including them, do you go by their diameter of their circumference?

  15. Sariel
    March 11th, 2011 at 14:41 | #15
  16. Mool
    March 11th, 2011 at 14:36 | #16

    sorry for my ignorance i am 13 what is torqe?

  17. Sariel
    March 11th, 2011 at 13:17 | #17

    @Luc2000
    You’re right about the colors, I should fix that. As for multiple motors, it has little sense – you just get more torque if you use motors of the same type, which is equal to torque times number of motors, and if you use motors of various types, you have to use some sort of adder mechanism and there is no way to calculate anything without knowing what it looks like. In short – that would take a huge amount of work and would be of very little use.

  18. March 11th, 2011 at 11:45 | #18

    First of all, nice update!
    I am wondering why you changed the colourscheme of most gears to current LEGO standards, but not all. The 8t and 24t should be Dark Bluish Grey, and the 12t double bevel should be black.
    It would also be cool if you could pick 2 or more motors.

  19. Sariel
    March 11th, 2011 at 07:38 | #19

    @Krika99
    Well, you’re talking about epicyclic gears, calculating the gear ratio for these is a terribly complex piece of maths.

  20. March 11th, 2011 at 00:37 | #20

    Whoops, looks like wordpress glitched up!
    anyways, like I was saying, most importantly, it’d be nice if you can choose which pairs of gears you want use, then have the liftarm/technic bricks display the proximity–basicly, reversing the inputs and outputs of the gear coupler tool.
    Thanks, Krika99

  21. March 11th, 2011 at 00:33 | #21

    This calculator is great–all of the gears are in their correct TLG production colours, which I really like, but just some suggestions:
    1. have the inner gear rings of turntables as an option,
    2. have http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/64712 piece as an option, and
    3. most importantly, it’d be nice if u can rather choose which pairs of gears you want use, then have

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