Ingrid has found something. Who knows what it is ??



Two clues here.





Ok,not that hard of a quiz,I know,
J

Tiger final drive.

Ooooooo sooo close,but....nope.
J

Tigers used straight gears not fishbones. I would say American.. and guess sherman final drive. If not it gets into modern stuff and I am out.

Since this was posted in the Panther research group as well I'm going to guess it's a Panther final drive

Yep - looks a LOT like a Panther unit! But I didn't think they had herring-bone gears either?...

They did not. They used straight gears which is one of the reasons they were prone to fail. If it is a panther drive... well oops.

Ach SCHEISSE !!
This is indeed supposed to be a Panther final drive. I just went back to my ref pic and it is freekin mislabeled. A whole nights' work down the freekin tubes.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
J

Ingrid looks shocked

Look at the up side, that is what it should have looked like. You did better than the Germans yours is tons stronger than what they made. Just need to sway out the gears for straight ones, or use a panther II and call it a 46 tank with upgraded final drives.

Thanks for looking at the glass half full. Elegant solution yes. It would have been way easier to build gears with straight teeth,
I may just bin this whole thing.

The weird thing is that herringbone gears were certainly well known and used in Germany at that time, and yet they went with the straight cut gear teeth, placing huge loads on each individual tooth. Why?

The Panther tank is filled with great design ideas and crazy design ideas. You can argue large portions of the tank were engineered to last far longer than any reasonable estimate of the war itself. Why?

My personal pet peeve is the crazy tight tolerances engineered into the Maybach engines. They were designed like F-1 racing engines, right on the edge of performance vs. durability. That's just stupid. Make the damned thing a bit heavier but much more durable, that's surely a better tradeoff for a 45 ton tank, isn't it?!

I realize the Panther got bloated out during the design process and they were trying to re-claim some of that extra weight wherever they could, but stealing back a few ounces out of important components like the crankshaft is silly.

I would have maybe tried to take a new approach to the wheel system, as I have to believe it could have been built with fewer wheels and a lot of saved weight per wheel left off the vehicle.

Well, just some rambling thoughts. I love Panther tanks. Am applying the final touches to a Dragon Panther "G" now with the anti-aircraft armor plates applied to turret and engine deck.

Maybe it was a cost vs necessity issue?
Maybe the tools/machinery for cutting herringbone gears were more urgently needed for other needs?
/ Robin

From some pdf describing different types of gears and their applications:
"Though their load capacity is very high, manufacturing difficulty makes them costlier than single helical gear. Their
applications are limited to high capacity reduction drives like that of cement mills and crushers."

Hmmm....
Final drive in a Sherman tank:


and the Panther:


and some more Sherman stuff:

http://www.theshermantank.com/about/the-sherman-tank-powertrain-page/the-final-drives-the-panthers-achilles-heel-the-shermans-gibraltar/

So WHY did the Panther get straight gears ?

Rush job? Use straight gears instead of "wasting" time on designing and manufacturing herringbone gears?

I would guess that's the case - they were rushing to field anything and everything as the Allies got closer. They also lost a lot of factories to bombing, so it's not out of line to think some of their engineers and manufacturing facilities were blown up before they could perfect the Panther final drives. And that is to the world's salvation.

From Spielberger's Panther & it's Variants :

Hello there Ingrid, G'd day!

...sorry sorta...

CHEERS

I suspect the helical gears were more costly both in time to make them and in aquisition of the machine tools required for the production numbers planned. The helical gears would run more quietly, but this would not have been a concern for a military vehicle I think, especially during wartime.

The IS-2 was better in most aspects than any models of the Panther.

Better ?



Hope so.
J

Much better. Now you need to make one with stripped gears, then you can have a cool dio of a panther crew swapping out the final drive with the tank commander rubbing his hands through his hair at the dumb design they made... well maybe that is a bit much to get across in plastic. Nice work.