Just in time for Valentine's Day, build your sweetie something that shows your love (and your love for gears). This admittedly odd video from Japan shows a heart someone has made--out of gears. Whether you enjoy its technical ingenuity or ponder its deeper implications about romance and relationships, it's an undeniably cool creation.
Gear Cutting Machines... in the White House?
When President Obama redecorated the Oval Office, he kept some old things and some new things. He kept the Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria in 1880, which has been used by nearly every president since Rutherford B. Hayes. He has added some things, though. With an eye on the American spirit of invention, he has three mechanical items on his bookshelves, on loan from the National Museum of American History's patent collection. President Obama now has before his eyes models for
- Samuel Morse's 1849 telegraph register
- John Peer's 1874 gear-cutting machine
- Henry Williams' 1877 feathering paddle wheel for steamboats
Plagued by gear noise and misalignment?
Every gear manufacturer knows that noise is often a big problem. As smaller, more powerful gearboxes are designed and built, reducing the noise of power transmission becomes nearly as big a problem as the transmission itself. Whether you enlarge the pinion, add noise-reducing materials, increase gear quality, or tinker with the gear ratio--many solutions have notable but varying effects. Design World, however, offers another solution for gear noise: Crowning.
Crowning, also known as barreling (the teeth of the gears) Design World says,
This technique involves changing the chordal thickness of the tooth along its axis. This modification eliminates end bearing by offering a contact bearing in the center of the gear.Aside from reducing gearbox noise, crowning your gears also helps prevent misalignment caused by inaccurate machining of the casting, housing, or shafting. Crowning helps prevent uneven wear in your gearbox. It can be done during the gear cutting processes, reducing the amount of time for a complete effort.
The Design World article is very interesting, and worth a look if you've been faced with some recent gearbox noise and misalignment problems.
Origins of the Ducati L-Twin
Ultimate Motorcycling has a brief history of Ducati's most coveted speed machine, the 1970s L-Twin. The motorcycle owes its distinctive shape to the bevel gear-driven two cylinder engine.
The Ducati bevel-gear twin-cylinder with a 90° V configuration (the "L-twin") was born and bred on the last day of winter in 1970. On that very day, the famous Ducati engineer Fabio Taglioni drew the design that would turn the tide from the single-cylinder Desmodromic engine to the L-twin Desmodromic configuration. Ducati, with Taglioni's help, had set the path forward for the engine platform would later be responsible for the Italian National Anthem being the most well recognized song at Superbike racetracks around the world.
Hit the link above for more about the Italian superbike.
Some Deep Thinking on Gear Grinding
We stumbled across a paper online, titled "Optimization of the Gear Profile Grinding Process Utilizing an Analogy Process," by Christof Gorgels, Heiko Schlattmeier, and Fritz Klocke. The paper goes into the novel problems posed by the improving gearing materials and the need by gear manufacturers to cut costs in gear grinding.
In order to grind gears burn-free and as productively as possible, a better understanding of the process is required. This is especially important for gear profile grinding, due to the complex contact conditions between workpiece and grinding wheel. In this article, an analogy process and a process model will be presented in order to gain a closer look into the process. Finally, different process strategies will be analyzed using the presented process model in order to give examples for the use of the described calculations.The paper goes into reasonably great detail in explaining and describing the process model in order to increase gear grinding efficiency and effectiveness. You can find the .pdf of the paper here.
Are You A Fan of 'How It's Made?'
If you are, then you should check out this video, from Machine Tool Systems. It's about CNC gear grinding. It even sports a cheesy/retro soundtrack to keep you enthused. It's definitely worth checking out.
AGMA Training Coming Next March
Don't forget to register for the annual Basic Training for Gear Manufacturing taking place March 10 through 14 at Daley College in Chicago. The training session is meant to help everyone the knowledge and productivity of everyone training. There will be classes offered in many fields of gearing:
- Gearing and nomenclature
- Principles of inspection
- Gear manufacturing methods
- Hobbing and shaping