One of the reasons of making heliostats small is to allow the
use of cheap plastic gears and toy motors.
Here are some TINY lists of typical prices that I have found for
the type of gears that I want to use.
I have found it very difficult to get information on the price of gears. Companies such as Stock Drive Products / Sterling Instruments are happy to give out excellent catalogs and handbooks for free, but when it comes to prices, you have ask for a detailed quote almost every time. I have yet to see a gear company that dares to post their prices on the Internet. Specs, yes, prices, no.
This has made it difficult and time-consuming to estimate the cost the mini-heliostat project. It is difficult for an individual to get a serious reponse to general questions like: "How much would 1,000 nylon, module 0.5, 12-tooth pinions cost? How many do I have to order if I want to get them for 10 cents each? 5,000? 10,000? 50,000?" The reponse, if there is one, is typically: "Your request for a quotation is too vague, please be more specific. It would be best to send a blueprint with the exact number of parts needed." Not really helpful.
For some reason, it is difficult to convince companies that I just want an order of magnitude estimate on their cheapest products. If any of you out there have some tips on how to ask companies to give rough estimates (other than telling bare-faced lies), I would be glad to hear them.
In the meantime, I managed to find some catalogs from some Swiss companies. The price lists are a bit outdated, but they serve to give an idea of pricing trends, which is all that I wanted. Note that these are all metric gears with standard 20° pressure angles, all made of acetal nylon, and the cheapest that I could find. From glancing at the catalogs, I found that aluminum-bronze gears are typically 10 to 20 times more expensive than their plastic counterparts. All costs in the tables below are in 1996 Swiss francs per gear. In some of the catalogs that I looked at, conic and miter gears were sold as pairs, so I have divided the cost of pairs based on the number of teeth on the gear to facilitate comparisons.
Brand:
Mädler (a German
brand)
Distributer:
Norm Antrieb AG
Güterstrasse 6
Postfach 74
CH-8245 Feuerthalen
SWITZERLAND
Tel: +41 52 659 3736
Fax: +41 52 659 3077
Notes:
The numbers in the rebate line are calculated based on the prices
of the 12-tooth spur gear and are not quite the same for the other
types of gears. It is up to you to make the calculation for the
others, if you are interested.
| rebate(%) | 0 | 3 | 10 | 13 | 16 | 26 | 32 | 42 | rebate(%) | |
| quantity | 1 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 | 250 | >500 | quantity | |
| gear type | # teeth | # teeth | ||||||||
| spur, module 0.5, EXTRUDED | 12 | 0.31 | 0.30 | 0.28 | 0.27 | 0.26 | 0.23 | 0.21 | 0.18 | 12 |
| spur, module 0.5, EXTRUDED | 20 | 0.52 | 0.40 | 0.31 | 20 | |||||
| spur, module 0.5, EXTRUDED | 120 | 2.50 | 1.88 | 1.48 | 120 | |||||
| miter, module 0.5, MOLDED | 16 | 0.40 | 0.33 | 0.28 | 16 | |||||
| conic, module 1.0, MOLDED | 15 | 1.21 | 1.00 | 0.82 | 15 | |||||
| conic, module 1.0, MOLDED | 45 | 3.67 | 3.04 | 2.50 | 45 | |||||
| quantity | 1 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | 100 | 250 | >500 | quantity |
Brand:
Distributer:
Nozag AG
Pünten 4
CH-8602 Wangen b. Dubendorf
Tel: +41 1 805 1717
Fax: +41 1 805 1718
Notes:
Nozag gears are pretty high quality and somewhat more expensive
than Norm Antrieb AG, not what I need for my project. The numbers
in the rebate line are the official rebate scheme of Nozag AG not
including the columns marked 24% and 80%. The 80% column is a
(crazy) projection of how many gears one would have to buy before
getting down to 10 centimes per piece for the simplest gear.
Clearly, it makes more sense to make one's own molds at some point
or buy from LEGO (whose cost per brick is between 3 and 10
cents).
| rebate(%) | 0 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 | 24? | 80? | rebate(%) | |
| quantity | 1 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | >100 | 200 | 3276800 | quantity | |
| gear type | # teeth | # teeth | ||||||||
| spur, module 0.5, MOLDED | 12 | 0.50 | 0.48 | 0.46 | 0.44 | 0.42 | 0.40 | 0.38 | 0.10 | 12 |
| spur, module 0.5, MOLDED | 20 | 0.70 | 0.14 | 20 | ||||||
| spur, module 0.5, MOLDED | 120 | 2.50 | 0.54 | 120 | ||||||
| miter, module 0.5, MOLDED | 16 | 0.60 | 0.12 | 16 | ||||||
| conic, module 1.0, MOLDED | 15 | 1.33 | 0.27 | 15 | ||||||
| conic, module 1.0, MOLDED | 45 | 3.98 | 0.80 | 45 | ||||||
| quantity | 1 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | >100 | 200 | 3276800 | quantity |
Brand:
Distributer:
Alfred Güdel Antriebstechnik AG
Industrie Nord
CH-4900 Langenthal
Tel: +41 63 22 14 28
Fax: +41 63 22 39 26
Notes:
The numbers in the rebate line are the official rebate scheme of
Alfred Güdel AG until the 20% column. After that, you must ask
for a quotation. Alfred Güdel AG offers the lowest prices of
the three companies reviewed here, but offers the least information
about its prices.
| rebate(%) | 0 | 5 | 10 | 20? | rebate(%) | |
| quantity | 1 | 5 | 10 | >20 | quantity | |
| gear type | # teeth | # teeth | ||||
| spur, module 0.5, MOLDED | 12 | 0.30 | 0.29 | 0.27 | 0.24 | 12 |
| spur, module 0.5, MOLDED | 20 | 0.40 | 20 | |||
| spur, module 0.5, MOLDED | 120 | 1.60 | 120 | |||
| miter, module 0.5, MOLDED | 16 | 0.43 | 16 | |||
| conic, module 1.0, MOLDED | 15 | 0.78 | 15 | |||
| conic, module 1.0, MOLDED | 45 | 2.33 | 45 | |||
| quantity | 1 | 5 | 10 | >20 | quantity |
From ward@apo.saic.com Thu Aug 26 14:14:31 1999 Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 18:52:41 -0400 From: Jon Ward To: Erik Rossen Subject: Gear costs I read your 13 Jul 1999 webpage (www.multimania.com/rossen/gears.html). I just started looking for gear suppliers and prices, and have come across only one on-line price list: Serv-O-Link at www.servolink.com. Not a wide variety, and just spur gears, but it at least gives me an idea of off-the-shelf prices. -- Jon Ward
--
Erik Rossen <rossen@rossen.ch>Copyright © 2000 until the heat-death of the Universe (thanks, Mickey!), by Erik Rossen
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