Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Wooden Planetary Gears


2 comments:

UBERMOUTH said...

And what can it be used for? :)

William Gruff said...

Watch the video carefully and you'll see that the strips of blue tape revolve at various speeds, making it a gearbox, which from its small size, can be used in, for instance, wheel hubs, as it is in the Humvee, as I understand. I am sure you have already perceived therefrom that that such devices can be used to transmit the drive from individual electric motors to the wheels or other devices they serve. Electric screwdrivers use rotary gearboxes, as I understand, and probably other tools like electric drills and so on. Planetary gears were originally used, if I recall correctly, by the firm of Boulton and Watt to convert reciprocal motion into rotary, although the invention of the much simpler crank rendered them unnecessary.

I imagine the builder made it simply for the joy to be had from working some material into a flawlessly functioning device.