Lord of the (Gear) Ring

New York City-based design company Kinekt Design has come up with an ingenious item, that is "complex enough to play with, yet simple enough to wear," as they say. They call it the Gear Ring, and as you can see in the video below, it is something you can both wear and play with.

The Gear Ring is made from high quality matte stainless steel. It has six small gears that turn in unison when the outerparts of the ring are spun (as can be seen in the video). If you have a gearing engineer--or just a gearhead--in your life, this could be a cool gift. (We're almost tempted to give this gift to ourselves!)

New Helical Gear System in the Shimano Alfine 11 Speed

Shimano has released a new iteration of its Alfine 11-speed internal gear hub. I know some of us at here are cyclists, and so we thought we'd share some news about this exceptional new hub (it's lighter than the previous iteration's 8-speed version!) If you think about it, bicycles are really one of the most pure, commonly known examples of gearing.

Singletrack, a mountain bike blog, does a good job breaking down the Alfine 11-speed hub,

This hub gear will run super smooth thanks to the use of a completely new helical gear system. Helical gears feature an angled teeth profile that engage more gradually compared to spur (or straight-cut) profiles, resulting in a more smooth and quiet shift. This hub gear also features an improved durability by the use of an oil lubricant instead of grease.

It's interesting (to say the least) to see helical gears used in bicycle gearing. You're so used to seeing spur gears that it's disorienting. But since there's increased surface area in a helical gear set-up, you would expect a smoother, less slippery shifting profile. I'm excited to see helical gears used more often in bicycles (and everywhere).

Gearing up for Valentine's Day

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

We thought it was pretty cool that the President has a (model of a) gear-cutting machine. Let's hope his decorative tastes presage a move to help American manufacturing and technology, industries that could really use some support.

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.