What are the advantages and disadvantages of gear reduction?
Well, the two main disadvantages are #1 you lose speed and #2 you have added weight for the gear box. But, on the other hand, there are some great advantages to using gear reduction. First, you bring the bot down to a manageable speed. Second, the motor doesn’t have to work as hard to spin the wheel which means it won’t draw as much current from your batteries. And third, along those lines, the torque produced by the output is inversely proportional to the amount of reduction in the gear box. Say what? Basically, if you have a 4:1 gear box then the bot moves 1/4 as fast but has 4 times the torque! So you can have a 120 pound robot with the right gearing that will push a 400 pound load across the floor! The optimum configuration will give you greatest speed but still have enough torque to cause the wheels to break traction (peel out) before the motor stalls. That optimum configuration varies from bot to bot and is up to you to figure out how to best implement it with your own robot.
