Chapter 2. Mechanical Design

In this chapter, we will build and program several models to demonstrate the basic principles of mechanical design. We will:

  • Explore the idea of mechanical advantage
  • Learn how you can increase either speed or torque using different combinations of gears
  • Build gearboxes with motors
  • Use the spur gears, beveled gears, and worm gears
  • Write a program to spin the motors a set number of rotations
  • Use the display on the EV3 brick

All of the models in this chapter can be built with both the EV3 Home Edition and EV3 Educational Edition kits.

Mechanical advantage

When designing a robot, sometimes we may want to build a fast robot that needs to get to its objective quickly. At other times, we may want a powerful robot. For instance, maybe ...

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