3 ms·
Why, bearing losses do not matter.
by stefan_ 8y ago
Why, bearing losses do not matter.
- ip26 8y agoI won't say you're wrong, the losses are small. But I guess they remind me of other technologies in the past that were by themselves incremental improvements, but as cost came down and they were put together with other incremental improvements, our capabilities advanced significantly & in ways we may not have expected. For one, I think bearings wearing out is the main failure mode of most electric motors.
- beambot 8y agoGreat example, also from rotating systems, is the harmonic drive gearbox -- a very compact & high gear ratio device that (curiously) uses a deformable metal "cup" (flexspline) rather than a 100% rigid piece of metal like a traditional gear. Huge improvement that is now commonplace in robotics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_drive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_drive
- InclinedPlane 8y agoThis is an opportunity to look at the problem from a different perspective. Currently, in all mechanical designs bearing losses are small, because if they were not the design would probably be unworkable or unfeasible. But consider, maybe there are new things that could come into existence which are not feasible today because of bearing losses. The internet, for example, didn't make it newly possible to send mail to people, but it made it so much easier that it changed what it meant to send mail.