Gearbox made from 3D printed parts and rubber bands

This insanely swell 3D printed, rubber-band driven gearbox is Michael Curry's entry into the Thingverse Rubber Band Challenge.

3D-printed, rubber-band-powered gearbox

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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david85282

If he builds a bigger version of that it will probably create perpetual motion, or so we’ve been told.
Anonymous

This is pretty much how one of the older exercise devices on ISS worked. More info/pic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0101/feature1/zoom1.html
tylerkaraszewski

This is not a “gearbox” in the sense where gearbox means “transmission” (which is the only sense in which I’ve ever heard it used). It’s just a rubber band winder with a reduction gear on it.
Anonymous

@JayConverse: It is for a rubber band powered record player, or that is what it was going to be for.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4775
JayConverse

I don’t get it. What does it do?
- hongaku
  
  It stores power in the rubber bands from the winding.
nixiebunny

It’s weird to see all those Allen head screws and ball bearings used with that cream-colored plastic. I expect to see aluminum in that environment.

Crazy thought for recycling old plastic consumer electronics waste: The 3D printer I visited earlier this year uses a spool of ABS plastic “wire” as its material. Why not make a machine that will grind up discarded ABS plastic gizmo housings and use the resulting granules as the raw material for 3D printing? Recycling and make-it-yourself, all rolled into one.
- muteboy
  
  The RepRap guys are working on that. With the rise of home 3D printing, there will be lots of failed, broken or prototype parts, so they want to make the fabber eat them, chew them up and use the plastic again.
Anonymous

Only two of those gears appear to be doing the work of a gear reduction. The rest is eye candy. Nice work none the less. I think I would replace useless gears with a latch and release lever mechanism.
turn_self_off

i wonder how long those gears would last if one hooked up a electric motor and just left it running.
- func
  
  The gears will probably last quite a while – the printed, plastic gears on my reprap extruder are mounted on a stepper motor and see a fair bit of torque, and I’ve got about 300 hours of continuous run time on them. One guy has printed over 60 Mendels with his geared extruder now; that’s roughly 4 months of continuous runtime. He runs his machine day and night. Check it out here:
  
  http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/
  
  The geared extruder is thing #1794 – http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1794
  
  Not as fancy as the rubber band gearbox thing, but it’s turned out to be pretty useful for a lot of people.
  - turn_self_off
    
    Thanks, this reinforces my suspicion that 3D printers could be used to make non-metallic spare parts to order for things like washers rather then order them from some warehouse or get a new machine.
    
    There goes the disposable consumerism that fuels modern capitalism…
    
    How long before we hear about some *AA like corporate org raiding hackerhouses with the help of SWAT?
    - muteboy
      
      func, you should read Adrian Bowyer’s original piece about RepRap and how it could change manufacturing for good.
      http://reprap.org/wiki/Wealth_Without_Money