Leveraging the Complementary Strengths of Orbitless and Planetary Drives

ABSTRACT

An Orbitless drive is a novel fixed-ratio epi-cyclic drive which includes a second carrier in place of a ring gear. It has been shown to have superior efficiency to a Planetary drive and is shown here to produce less vibration and noise at the expense of reduced torque capacity and ratio. A prototype 16mm Orbitless drive is constructed and compared to an off-the-shelf Planetary drive. Vibrations that occur at the Planetary tooth engagement frequency are absent from the Orbitless drive. A higher quality 32mm Orbitless prototype is evaluated in a multi-stage environment in both a stand-alone and multi-stage configuration. It is shown that sound levels are reduced, sound quality is improved, and it is concluded that an Orbitless primary stage may be mated with conventional technologies to minimize NVH levels in multi-stage gear drives.

Pages: 10

ISBN: 978-1-64353-047-5

Author: Leo Stocco, PhD, PEng