Idler gear

A gear train is a mechanical system formed by mounting gears on a frame so that the teeth of the gears engage.

Gear teeth are designed to ensure the pitch circles of engaging gears roll on each other without slipping, providing a smooth transmission of rotation from one gear to the next.

The transmission of rotation between contacting toothed wheels can be traced back to the Antikythera mechanism of Greece and the south-pointing chariot of China. Illustrations by the Renaissance scientist Georgius Agricola show gear trains with cylindrical teeth. The implementation of the involute tooth yielded a standard gear design that provides a constant speed ratio.

Features of gears and gear trains include:

Gear teeth are designed so that the number of teeth on a gear is proportional to the radius of its pitch circle, and so that the pitch circles of meshing gears roll on each other without slipping. The speed ratio for a pair of meshing gears can be computed from ratio of the radii of the pitch circles and the ratio of the number of teeth on each gear.

The velocity v of the point of contact on the pitch circles is the same on both gears, and is given by

where input gear A with radius r_A and angular velocity ω_A meshes with output gear B with radius r_B and angular velocity ω_{B .} Therefore,

where N_A is the number of teeth on the input gear and N_B is the number of teeth on the output gear.

The mechanical advantage of a pair of meshing gears for which the input gear has N_A teeth and the output gear has N_B teeth is given by

This shows that if the output gear G_B has more teeth than the input gear G_A, then the gear train amplifies the input torque. And, if the output gear has fewer teeth than the input gear, then the gear train reduces the input torque.

If the output gear of a gear train rotates more slowly than the input gear, then the gear train is called a speed reducer. In this case, because the output gear must have more teeth than the input gear, the speed reducer amplifies the input torque.

For this analysis, we consider a gear train that has one degree-of-freedom, which means the angular rotation of all the gears in the gear train are defined by the angle of the input gear.

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Wikipedia