What the GBX1200160842D actually is
The GBX1200160842D is a planetary gearbox from the Schneider Electric GBX family, built around straight-cut gearing in a 120 mm-diameter black anodized aluminium housing with a C 45 steel output shaft — the format used as a bolt-on speed reducer between a servo or stepper drive and the driven load. It carries a 16:1 reduction ratio and is rated for 260 N·m continuous output torque, so the unit is sized for mid-range motion axes where the holding and accelerating torque on the load stays inside that envelope; the 416 N·m maximum output torque is the short-duration ceiling a designer must respect for peak accelerations.
Ratings that drive the fit decision
Efficiency is listed at 94 %, which is the figure to fold into the motor-sizing calculation — the gearbox itself consumes roughly 6 % of the input power as heat, so the upstream servo or drive has to be rated to deliver torque at the gearbox input shaft that is 1/16 of the output shaft requirement divided by 0.94. Torsional rigidity is 13 N·m/arcmin and maximum torsional backlash is 12 arc.min — these two numbers together govern positioning accuracy on the driven axis; higher rigidity tightens the closed-loop response, while the backlash figure sets the worst-case reversal error that has to be compensated in the controller. The moment of inertia at the input is 1.75 g·cm², a small value that keeps the reflected inertia on the motor shaft low and avoids dragging down acceleration on a directly coupled servo.
Service life and the load envelope around the output shaft
The published service life is 30000 h at 100 rpm and 30 °C — that envelope is the baseline a designer has to honour when sizing the radial and axial loads on the output shaft, and the published maximum radial force Fr of 1500 N at 100 rpm over 30000 h at 30 °C (rising to 2000 N for a 10000 h life) is keyed to the load being applied at mid-distance from the output shaft. The corresponding maximum axial force Fa is 2100 N at 100 rpm across the 30000 h life, or 2800 N if the service life is limited to 10000 h — these are the figures a mechanical designer uses to size the bearing stack on the driven end and to decide whether an external thrust bearing is needed. Mounting position is unrestricted (any position), which removes the orientation constraint when integrating the unit into a machine, and the IP54 rating at the shaft output covers splash and dust ingress on the seal interface but not direct washdown.