Smart Transmission Design

Many athletes follow the motto "higher, faster, stronger", because this has been the official Olympic motto for many decades. This motto has also long been accepted in German industry. Because regardless of whether sales figures are higher, production times are faster or products are to become ever more powerful, that is to say stronger - the growth idea is driving. In industrial drive technology, for example, drive units should on the one hand be equipped with more and more functionality, on the other hand, the output power from existing installation space should be increased, particularly in the dynamic range.

In order to be able to implement the latter, the required higher output must increase significantly in each individual module of a drive unit (gear, motor, electronics). For the electronically commutated internal rotor motors (ECI), this means that higher starting torques with simultaneously reduced rotor moments of inertia are required in order to significantly improve the dynamic behavior.

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Do justice to mechanical robustness

This poses a great challenge especially for the gearbox. In order to do justice to the higher performance and the mechanical robustness, the gearbox specialists attach great importance to the optimal design of the toothing and bearing of the output shaft as well as the choice of the materials used.

With the new Optimax gearbox series, EBM-Papst is meeting precisely these requirements for robustness and overload capability. The Optimax 63 gear unit with an edge dimension of 63 mm will be available as the first size.

Drive system

Drive in and find out - the modular drive system

Additional information on downloads and orders via the online portal

Interested parties and users can view, print or download technical data, drawings and 3D models of the new drive solutions from April on the online portal of EBM-Papst. The Optimax 63 preferred types are then also available on the online portal and ready for dispatch within 48 hours of receipt of the order.

Feeling the gear on the tooth

The many years of experience in the design of gears for planetary gearboxes paid off here. It is not only the size of the teeth or the choice of the number of teeth that is important, but above all the design of the rolling behavior of the wheels in the transmission. Due to the possible degrees of freedom in the design of a toothing, the developer has a virtually unlimited number of possible solutions. The trick is to find the perfect “setting” out of all possibilities. In the case of the Optimax, the focus was on the requirements to transmit high continuous torques and to be able to endure shock loads for a short time. It was also important to take a holistic view of the Optimax series and to build it up intelligently with regard to multiple component uses and a strategically favorable reduction range.

In order to be able to transmit the greatest possible power, gears with a very large wheel width are installed in the Optimax gearboxes - thus, despite high torques, the surface pressure and thus wear on the tooth flanks are minimized, which in turn achieves a long service life. Another special feature of the Optimax transmission are the four instead of the usual three planet gears installed in one gear stage. Due to the force distribution on four planets, around 30% more torque can be transmitted.

Make the best use of the square cross-section

The performance of a gearbox (i.e. the amount of torque that can be transmitted) is of course always measured by its size / space requirement. Attention was also paid to this during development: in an almost square cross-section, the edge dimension 63 mm is used as well as possible by large ring gear teeth. The installation space in the area of ​​the "corners" is used to screw the gear parts together.

transmission

An overview of the world of gears

Content of the article:

• Page 1: Smart transmission design
• Page 2: Manufacturing components at optimal cost

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