Forklift Lift Direct Transmission

Hi! I'm Ezra Norman from the Chattanooga Christian school. I have invented a one-of-a-kind transmission that uses power from a gasoline engine in a forklift to accurately move the lift. How does it work? The simple answer is that it has two inputs. One from the engine (speed irrelevant torque) and one from a small electric motor (torque irrelevant speed) and the transmission has an output that puts all load on to the engine but matches exactly the direction and speed of the small electric motor. This eliminates heavy and complicated hydraulic systems. I will put how it works in detail at the bottom.

My inspiration was a vacuum that was self-propelled. I thought, how does it do this? I did some research and it just uses an electric motor to move it. I thought, well there may be a better way to do this... and I began thinking. If I can use a differential to basically add two speeds, what if I add and then subtract an input from the main motor? I have done some math as well on the sketches to make sure everything works and how I should model it. I have a few sketches that show those stages. Around this time I was like, "What if I put this on a forklift?" Sure enough, I look on Instructables, and voila! there the challenge is.

Link to project CAD You can look through the different versions that I saved to follow along with the progress. To start, I modeled all of the gears using GF Gear Generator. Next, I modeled the first differential. After some adjustments to sizes to account for 3d printing inaccuracies, I printed the first differential and went on to model the rest of the transmission. I had some issues holding up a few gears connecting the differentials, but those issues were soon solved.

Next up, I 3d printed every piece on my He3d k280 delta printer using super slicer and Klipper. After assembly, it worked! I had designed it to be assembled by melting the plastic with a soldering iron instead of gluing it so that it holds up better. Earlier on, I promised that I would describe how it works in detail so here it is. Let's call the input from the engine A, the input from the motor B, and the output C. For each differential, we have the two side inputs X and Y, as well as the shell Z. output = A->X1, B->Y1, Z1 gear ratio 1:2->X2, B gear ratio 1:-1 -> Y2 Z gear ratio 1:2->C. There we have it. Thanks for reading!!!!