Crane Gearbox
Built by Adrian Ashford in June 2009
This is the gearbox from the Electric Derrick Crane featured in the January 1949 issue of Meccano Magazine.
It provides three movements; hoisting and luffing operated by a single lever, and slewing which works by a pinion on a longitudinal rod meshing with a 50-tooth contrate wheel fixed to the rod about which the superstructure (of which only the base has been modelled) swivels.
The gearbox has a reversible drive to the input shaft, as the original used an E020 non-reversing (“cricket ball”) type motor. An EMEBO has been substituted in this reconstruction. Minor modifications have been made to the original, including re-arrangement of the gearing input shaft, a brake on the slewing drive so that it won’t turn freely when the drive is disengaged, and the use of short grub screws, as it was found that certain gears fouled the standard ones in other gears. Their use is in fact essential, but no mention was made about this in the instructions!