7The Guts: Bearings, Couplers, Gears, Screws, and Springs
The guts of a mechanism are everything that happens between the input and output. The input is your energy source, which can range from a hand crank to an electric motor. The output is what you want to happen—does your mechanism crawl, spin, point, or shake? Maybe you need to attach a gear to your motor shaft or figure out how to make something spin with lower friction.
The components we’ll cover in this chapter are integral to being able to work through your ideas and make them into reality. The majority of them can be found through a quick search on McMaster and other suppliers I’ll point out along the way.
Bearings and Bushings
Bearings are components that are used between moving ...
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