A thorough understanding of the mechanical load is crucial to successful motion applications. Gear designers are experts in understanding the mechanical load. Not just the RMS power requirement, but other issues such as impulse loads, the impact of heat on part geometry and life expectancy.
Gear design, like electric motor design, has continued to evolve as clever designs have been developed in an effort to meet unique requirements and competitive situations. The parallel spur gear reducer and worm and spur gear have been in use for many years. While these systems have been used for many power train applications, they have performance limitations that makes them impractical for use in motion applications. Relatively high backlash and low efficiency create problems in many motion control situations.
More exotic geometries like planetary, cycloidal, and harmonic have emerged over the years and have becomes established solutions, available off-the-shelf products ready to use. Each of these technologies has it’s own unique attributes that must be considered in motion applications. All are capable of high accuracy and low backlash. Claims of zero backlash by some vendors need to be tempered by the fact that backlash may be hard to measure, but in the case of rolling or flexing geometries, cycloidal and harmonic reducers, there is torsional flexure taking place.
One of the less well know solutions is the double enveloping worm and spur.
Filed Under: Mechatronic Tips