Edgy01

Anyone aware of any company considering or using the harmonic drive for automotive applicaitons,--e.g., transmissions?

dD/dt

http://www.harmonicdrive.net/referen...ingprinciples/

There may be one or two others who didn't know what this was... I had never heard of it until now.

Anyway, I don't know of any. It seems like the biggest advantage is being able to achieve substantial gear reduction (i.e. 100:1) in a single stage. Would this be useful in a car? That sort of reduction is beyond what is necessary in a car with a reciprocating engine, although it might do well to adapt a turbine (jet) engine to a car.

Consider a car with 19" wheels, whose engine turns at 2000 rpm at 60 mph. Stated another way, the engine turns 2000 revolutions per mile. Each 19" wheel has a circumference of 59.7", and thus covers that distance in one revolution. So in one mile (5280' = 63360"), the wheels rotate 1061 times. This means the engine makes 1.88 revolutions for each revolution of the wheels, requiring a reduction of less than 2:1. Obviously shorter gearing would be required for lower speeds, but not the sort this could provide.

Still it's a cool concept.

Edgy01

Was curious to see if anyone else thought like I do. We use these in our business for a specialized application.