Extreme Reduction Gearing Device Offers an Amazing Gear Ratio

ErnieKey writes: The 3D printed extreme reduction gearing device, created by long-time puzzle maker M. Oskar van Deventer, may leave you puzzled for its obvious applications, but the coaxial cranking mechanism offers potential in a variety of real-world applications with multi-colored gears that move in opposite directions at a ratio of 11,373,076 : 1. This 3D printed reduction gearing device is compact and multi-colored, and looks deceivingly simple at first glance. Developed through a complex algorithm, it could possibly offer potential as parts for machines like 3D printers, aerospace and automotive components, as well as perhaps robotics and a variety of motors.

Comments

Missing something

[BitZtream]

Other than being printed, what's the special part? What makes it different from every other transmission other that it has many gears and uses excessive/bad ratios between them that make the device worthless from a practical perspective.

its got 5 tooth pinions FFS, that'd be so rough and wouldn't last any length of time under load ... And then he discovered that if repeatedly chain those gears you get larger ratios still.

You can do the same thing with fewer worm gears and smoother operation.

This isn't even a little bit new, he's just chained a bunch of gears and is using the inside of the circle rather than the outside.

Someone show this guy a traditional automatic transmission or a newer CVD and watch his head explode. His gadget is pretty trivial, certainly nothing novel about it

Re:Missing something

[BitZtream]

... Everything I do is more creative than this. Just because you have no clue that this isn't impressive doesn't magically make it so.

I know how it works, there is nothing new about it. The video doesn't demonstrate anything new or uncommon, the only uncommon part about it is that he used shitty ratios that would break the instant it wasn't free wheeling. You can not use 5 tooth pinions if you want to do anything more that a free wheeling toy.

Hint: LOTS OF THINGS SMALLER CAN EASILY BEAT THAT RATIO GIVEN THE SAME CONSTRAINTS. Those things are just worthless in a lot of cases.

Open up a old school watch. That's impressive. Then get back to me about how compact this thing is for its ratio. Combine any two hand wound mechanical wrist watches, just the gears between hours and seconds, your already at 1:12M, and many times more "compact"

Get a clue before you make an ass out of yourself next time.

Re:it could...

[donscarletti]

The weight of the fridge, transferred via the rope and pully, will rip the gears clear off the end of the shaft and tear this 3D printed device apart.

I think the point of the grandparent is that the torque caused by a fridge dangling from a rope is far from extreme, a 100kg fridge on a rope wound on a 0.5m diameter capstan would exert 245Nm of torque onto the axle, less than the engine from a standard family car does before reduction gearing.

While that little hand held plastic toy might not handle the stress, if you were to scale it up or 3d print it out of metal (as some newer 3d printers can do) it would handle it easily.

The point of the 9v winching example is not that a fridge exerts a lot of torque onto the capstan, it is that a battery driven electric motor exerts so little.

Re:it could...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even like that.

Because the static friction is non-zero, the end ratio gears will have significant stick-slip and will not move 1nm, but rather cog up for a large number of rotations then suddenly move many microns or more.

The only reliable ways to move objects nanometrically is on fluid bearings, field bearings (electric, magnetic), or flexural bearings (which incidentally can be made quite easily from metal or plastic with a laser cutter, milling machine, or 3D printer).

Cut a few reduction levers in a plate of metal with flexural bearings and you easily have a nanometric linear stage.