Rack and Pinion Gears

By Julia Byrd
October 17, 2021

Today I learned about rack and pinion gears. Rack and pinion gears change a spinning motion into a sliding motion. I also learned about using the light sensor to trigger the motion.

First, I wanted to set up the rack and pinion gears. I saw these in the kit and I wanted to learn how to use them.

Using trial and error I worked out how to hold these together but let them slide back and forth.

Next I wanted to connect it to a motor, so I made a frame for the motor.

Next I wanted to hold them all together so I mounted them on a big yellow plate.

With the motor set up, I tried some code to make the little gear (pinion) turn and move the flat gear (rack).

This worked really well. It took a few tries to figure out that 1.55 turned was the right amount. Next, I wanted it to turn both ways. So I thought I would try using a color sensor to let me choose which way it turns based on the color.

Then I worked up new new code that uses if blocks to choose direction based on color.

This also worked well. I noticed, however, that it would only do it once, and only if I had the color block in front of the sensor when I started the program. So I decided that adding a loop would be helpful. I also added a little wait and a beep in each loop so that I would know what was happening.

This worked just like I wanted. Two things I noticed about this code. First, the beep 100 scared my mom and sounded like the fire alarm! Second, if I held the same color block for too long then it would try to rotate again, but since it was at the end of the rack bad things would happen! In the future, I also would like to make it so that it starts after a certain color is shown.