Gearbox: Defining Loads
There was a time when no thinking person drove a car with more than 100,000 miles on a long-distance trip. A standard warranty was 12 […]
The Gearbox: Known Unknowns
A product specification needs to encompass everything known about the application, and that includes anything that is “unknown.” No, I am not trying to play […]
Gear Design: Defining the Goal
A critical step to having a successful project is defining the objective. Seems like a simple concept, but it is often overlooked or so poorly […]
Gear Design: Putting Knowledge to Work
We have now spent over half the year reviewing fundamental concepts in gears. Knowledge is just trivia unless you put it to work; it can […]
Planetary Gears: A Few More Things
Before we move on to other topics, here are a few random thoughts on planetary drive design: 1. Learn the “rules” on numbers of teeth. […]
Maximum Power Density
For some applications, maximum power density is worth the cost and difficulty of a complex epicyclic or “planetary” design. If, like me, you prefer simplicity, […]
Planetary Drives: The Same but Different
Those ancient planetary drives I first got involved with in 1979 (see previous 7/3 posting) were a collection of very simple to make parts. The […]
Planetary Gears: Inside Information
The Story So Far There are many different arrangements for planetary drives, but they all require internal gears. As mentioned previously, we do not know […]
Suns and Planets
The first planetary drive I helped take apart had three stages of through hardened spur gears encased in a simple cast iron tube with plates […]
Planetary Gearboxes: A Wheel Inside a Wheel
We will never know who invented the internal gear — much less the multitude of “epicyclic” or “planetary” gear systems — but we know from […]