Link-Mounted Gear Trains

Abstract

This paper distinguishes, as a subject worthy of recognition and study in its own right, the class of mechanism comprising gears mounted with axes coincident with the pivot points of a linkage. The same concept serves for the analysis of the assembly conditions of multiple-contact gear trains, in which a ‘virtual’ linkage may be visualized. A variety of known mechanisms, commonly dealt with, for design analysis purposes, on an ad hoc basis, fall within the same broad concept; no novelty is claimed for any mechanism as such, and the paper merely attempts to indicate some principal sub-divisions into which broader studies might be grouped. These fall under the two main categories of ‘kinematic’ and ‘geometrical’ analysis, although these again converge when a linked gear train is used to form a differential mechanism by which a function of the deformation of the linkage is superimposed on the angular motion of the gears and their connecting shafts. It is possible that co-ordinated studies of linkages and gears in combination, as here adumbrated, might lead to the development of new, particular mechanisms capable of engineering application.