Hello Brady, you old timer you!
When I set the planetary gears and the sun gear at the prescribed number of teeth (as I did with the ring gear), they (the gears themselves), were too small in diameter to engage, being off maybe 15-20%. I can't increase the sizes in diameter proportionately for engagement because then the gear cogs get bigger (wider) too and won't mesh up with the outer ring (which is actually called an "inner gear") lol
The outer ring is tricky in any case and I'm saving that idea for another project. If it's going to be employed as an "electric wall sculpture" (what else would I do with these?), it will need some type of retainer around it to keep it from working itself off of the planetary gears and I haven't figured that out quite yet. That's part of the fun of it though. I get to pretend I'm an engineer!
Following is another brief video of the design I'm playing with now. It's just a rough mock-up cut out of some old 1/4" plastic I had laying around, very plain jane. Intricate spokes and whatever else will be added for the final production and fabrication, and I'll cut the gears again out of 1/2" sheet PVC, which cuts like butter and is easily paintable with the Krylon plastic paints available now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWoprtB_7zE
Call me crazy (you won't be the first), but I think I can sell these. Folks gawk at the first one I've made. They love to look at it and ask what its' purpose is. I reply with "Its' purpose is for you to look at!", to which they generally say something like; "It's AWESOME!" haha. I thought about adding some kind of clock to the works, but we already have enough clocks, don't we? Anyway, what can be done is only limited by imagination and a little engineering!