Slashdot Mirror
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.
In the end, a slightly less impressive variation on "Machine with Concrete."'?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
My browser submitted the post before I was done writing it.
Distributing those pulses to the different windings has to be done externally, via transistors or other controlling electronics. So the pulses don't need precision timing or anything, you just have to count them.
On the other hand, stepper motors can only have a certain number of steps per revolution (64 steps is a typical example, but other values are available) . So if you want something like 1/1000th turn, you do need a gear or screw of some sort.
For very slow rotation, such as clocks, synchronous motors are normally used. They use the ac swing from positive to negative rather than a commutator. They're quite accurate, and used to be more so, because the ac supply is regulated to exactly 60 hertz in order to allow power companies to interconnect. Again you don't have to deal with any intricate control of the pulses, just count the number of swings from positive to negative and back. The precision of the 60 hertz ac rate was recently reduced in the US, but it's still precise enough for most purposes.
Depends how close the gears mesh.
You have knew 2.5 turns moved a print head 1 nanometre, you'd also need to take in to account to move it in the opposite direction you just did, you need to move 2000 turns to mesh the gears in the other direction, on average, But since all the gears aren't made to nanometre precision, its really somewhere between 1000 and 3000 turns depending on where in the rotation each gear is.
The [lack of] precision in the bearings is much more significant than angular precision.
You solve that with better manufacturing techniques.
Harmonic drives are already used industrially and commercially. This is essentially a double harmonic drive driven with a planetary gearset. Nothing some good precision manufacturing couldn't create something amazing with.
=Smidge=
Is there a video/paper on this experiment? Sounds interesting. How big is the resulting crystal?
moox. for a new generation.