Abstract: In a printing apparatus with a component such as an imaging surface having critical drive motion uniformity, there is provide a drive system with at least one meshing pair of rotatable first and second drive gears, with at least one gear having gear teeth with a crowned outer engagement edge, with crowning sufficient to substantially increase the drive motion uniformity of the drive system in spite of alignment variations of said first and second gear axes of gear rotation. Preferably each meshing gear has all its gear teeth only half-crowned, on only one side, to allow for simple and low cost gear molding, but the gears are mounted to oppositely mesh their respectively half-crowned sides. The amount of crowning may be in the range of approximately 75-100 microns.