4 ms·
The point of this gearbox is the small size. The space needle gets to use a gear that is the size of the top level, and drive it with a gear that is a few inche
by chrisBob 11y ago
The point of this gearbox is the small size. The space needle gets to use a gear that is the size of the top level, and drive it with a gear that is a few inches in diameter. That has always been easy to do and is the sort of thing this compact gearbox avoids.
[edited for mistake: motor -> gearbox]
- TylerE 11y agoI seriously doubt they use a gear the size of the base. I doubt the facilities to manufacturer a gear that big exist anywhere. Gear machining is a very specialized operation.+ More likely it's a train of gears of much more moderate ratio...a series of 5:1 or 10:1 reductions, say.
- makomk 11y agoAt that size and speed, I don't think you need the gear to be particularly precisely machined.
- tonyarkles 11y agoYou do if you're going to be meshing a much smaller gear to it. For the two to fit together, the teeth on the larger gear need to be the same size as the teeth on the smaller one.
- kevhito 11y agoBased on this photo [1], I'm guessing they use a system much like a cog railway. There would be a continuous ring of teeth along the tracks and a small motor on the platform with a few inch gear to engage the cog. Or vice versa. The cog ring would probably be made up of several smaller segments.
- Someone 11y agohttp://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111118/NEWS01/711189872 http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20111118/NEWS01/711189872 makes it look like they do. As kevhito says (but (s)he forgot to include the URL), it is more like a train running on a cog railway, with the train fixed and the rail moving.