Hi! Currently I am building an OpenRC Truggy, and I’m really interrested in a locking diff.
It seems that the only diffs available currently are open diffs which means that if only 1 wheel is off the ground, all power goes to that wheel and we’ve completely lost power to the other 3 wheels.
I understand that creating something intricate as a torsen diff with a 3d printer will probably be very hard, as the concept of a torsen diff is one of worm wheels running together and locking each other up if needed, which I find hard to imaging working properly with PLA plastic.
The alternative however is a completely rigid diff, which people seem to do to their 1:1 racecars a lot by welding the axles to the carrier. The downside of this, at least on 1:1 race cars, is excesive tyre wear since the outer wheel will be spinning at the exact same speed as the inner wheel, which causes rubbing againt the tarmac.
Anyway, a completely rigid diff would be something that I coud maybe create in Blender from the parts already available on thingiverse. Interesting to try out sometime…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDsQAs0Ldes
Fitting all those gears into an OpenRC sized diff is probably not going to work out because the parts will simply be too small however :-/ I guess my best option is to “weld” the 3 diffs shut thus providing permanent traction to all 4 wheels.