Gears

Gears are used in tons of mechanical devices. They do several important jobs, but most important, they provide a gear reduction in motorized equipment. This is key because, often, a small motor spinning very fast can provide enough power for a device, but not enough torque. For instance, an electric screwdriver has a very large gear reduction because it needs lots of torque to turn screws, but the motor only produces a small amount of torque at a high speed. With a gear reduction, the output speed can be reduced while the torque is increased. Another thing gears do is adjust the direction of rotation. For instance, in the differential between the rear wheels of your car, the power is transmitted by a shaft that runs down the center of the car, and the differential has to turn that power 90 degrees to apply it to the wheels.

Spur Gears
Spur gears are the most common type of gears. They
have straight teeth, and are mounted on parallel shafts. Sometimes, many spur gears are used at once to create very large gear reductions. Spur gears are used in many, like the electric screwdriver, dancing monster, oscillating sprinkler, windup alarm clock, washing machine and clothes dryer. But you won't find many in your car. This is because the spur gear can be really loud. Each time a gear tooth engages a tooth on the other gear, the teeth collide, and this impact makes a noise. It also increases the stress on the gear teeth. To reduce the noise and stress in the gears, most of the gears in your car are

helical.

Helical Gears
The teeth on helical gears are cut at an angle to the face of the gear. When two teeth on a helical gear system engage, the contact starts at one end of the tooth and gradually spreads as the gears rotate, until the two teeth are in full engagement. This gradual engagement makes helical gears operate much more smoothly and quietly than spur gears. For this reason, helical gears are used in almost all car transmissions. Because of the angle of the teeth on helical gears, they create a thrust load on the gear when they mesh. Devices that use helical gears have bearings that can support this thrust load. One interesting thing about helical gears is that if the angles of the gear teeth are correct, they can be mounted on perpendicular shafts, adjusting the rotation angle by 90 degrees.

Bevel Gears
Bevel gears are useful when the direction of a shaft's rotation needs to be changed. They are usually mounted on shafts that are 90 degrees apart, but can be designed to work at other angles as well. The teeth on bevel gears can be straight, spiral or hypoid. Straight bevel gear teeth actually have the same problem as straight spur gear teeth -- as each tooth engages, it impacts the corresponding tooth all at once. Just like with spur gears, the solution to this problem is to curve the gear teeth. These spiral teeth engage just like helical teeth: the contact starts at one end of the gear and progressively spreads across the whole tooth.

On straight and spiral bevel gears, the shafts must be perpendicular to each other, but they must also be in the same plane. If you were to extend the two shafts past the gears, they would intersect. The hypoid gear, on the other hand, can engage with the axes in different planes.

Worm Gears
Worm gears are used when large gear reductions are needed. It is common for worm gears to have reductions of 20:1, and even up to 300:1 or greater. Many worm gears have an interesting property that no other gear set has: the worm can easily turn the gear, but the gear cannot turn the worm. This is because the angle on the worm is so shallow that when the gear tries to spin it, the friction between the gear and the worm holds the worm in place. This feature is useful for machines such as conveyor(transportador) systems, in which the locking feature can act as a brake for the conveyor when the motor is not turning . One other very interesting usage of worm gears is in the Torsen differential, which is used on some high-performance cars and trucks.

Rack and Pinion Gears

Rack and pinion gears are used to convert rotation into linear motion. A perfect example of this is the steering system(sistema de direccin) on many cars. The steering wheel rotates a gear which engages the rack(cremallera). As the gear turns, it slides the rack either to the right or left, depending on which way you turn the wheel. Rack and pinion gears are also used in some scales to turn the dial that displays your weight.

Bearings

The concept behind a bearing is very simple: Things roll better than they slide. The wheels on your car are like big bearings. If you had something like skis instead of wheels, your car would be a lot more difficult to push down the road. That is because when things slide, the friction between them causes a force that tends to slow them down. But if the two surfaces can roll over each other, the friction is greatly reduced. A simple bearing, like the kind found in a skate wheel Bearings reduce friction by providing smooth metal balls or rollers, and a smooth inner and outer metal surface for the balls to roll against. These balls or rollers "bear" the load, allowing the device to spin smoothly.

Bearing Loads
Bearings typically have to deal with two kinds of loading, radial and thrust. Depending on where the bearing is being used, it may see all radial loading, all thrust loading or a combination of both. The bearings in the electric motor and the pulley pictured above face only a radial load. In this case, most of the load comes from the tension in the belt connecting the two pulleys.

The bearings in this stool are subject to a thrust load.

The bearing above is like the one in a barstool. It is loaded purely in thrust, and the entire load comes from the weight of the person sitting on the stool.

How Bearings Work Types of Bearings

There are many types of bearings, each used for different purposes. These include ball bearings, roller bearings, ball thrust bearings, roller thrust bearings and tapered roller thrust bearings.

Ball Bearings
Ball bearings, as shown below, are probably the most common type of bearing. They are found in everything from inline skates to hard drives. These bearings can handle both radial and thrust loads, and are usually found in applications where the load is relatively small. In a ball bearing, the load is transmitted from the outer race to the ball, and from the ball to the inner race. Since the ball is a sphere, it only contacts the inner and outer race at a very small point, which helps it spin very smoothly. But it also means that there is not very much contact area holding that load, so if the bearing is overloaded, the balls can deform or squish, ruining the bearing.

Roller Bearings
Roller bearings like the one illustrated below are used in applications like conveyer belt rollers, where they must hold heavy radial loads. In these bearings, the roller is a cylinder, so the contact between the inner and outer race is not a point but a line. This spreads the load out over a larger area, allowing the bearing to handle much greater loads than a ball bearing. However, this type of bearing is not designed to handle much thrust loading. A variation of this type of bearing, called a needle bearing, uses cylinders with a very small diameter. This allows the bearing to fit into tight places.

Ball Thrust Bearing

Ball thrust bearings like the one shown below are mostly used for low-speed applications and cannot handle much radial load. Barstools and Lazy Susan turntables use this type of bearing.

Roller Thrust Bearing

Roller thrust bearings like the one illustrated below can support large thrust loads. They are often found in gearsets like car transmissions between gears, and between the housing and the rotating shafts. The helical gears used in most transmissions have angled teeth -- this causes a thrust load that must be supported by a bearing.

Tapered Roller Bearings

Tapered roller bearings can support large radial and large thrust loads.

Tapered roller bearings are used in car hubs, where they are usually mounted in pairs facing opposite directions so that they can handle thrust in both directions.

Some Interesting Uses

There are several types of bearings, and each has its own interesting uses, including magnetic bearings and giant roller bearings.

Magnetic Bearings
Some very high-speed devices, like advanced flywheel energy storage systems, use magnet bearings. These bearings allow the flywheel to float on a magnetic field created by the bearing. Some of the flywheels run at speeds in excess of 50,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). Normal bearings with rollers or balls would melt(derretirse) down or explode at these speeds. The magnetic bearing has no moving parts, so it can handle these incredible speeds.

Giant Roller Bearings

Probably the first use of a bearing was back when the Egyptians were building the pyramids. They put round logs under the heavy stones so that they could roll them to the building site. This method is still used today when large, very heavy objects like the Cape Hatteras lighthouse need to be moved.

Earthquake-Proof Buildings
The new San Francisco International Airport uses many advanced building technologies to help it with stand earthquakes. One of these technologies involves giant ball bearings.