Innovative transmission

[jholman]

New from Oz!

http://www.gizmag.com/steve-durnin-d...m_medium=email

[daiquiri]

That's very interesting!
So there are things yet to be invented in mechanics.

well, why not, John Boyd Dunlop was a veterinarian..............

[alan white]

Impossible. I've considered such a thing but I always knew that to do it you needed a form of parasitic drag which in this case is energy stored in a flywheel, meaning the transmission works only while the flywheel is accellerating, and then it stops transmitting power.
Stepless gears with teeth are absolutely impossible. It's like perpetual motion. Make it complicated enough, and nobody can figure out how it works, but hook it up to something and it won't work.
That is, unless a huge portion of the power is given over to friction.

[Lurvio]

Looks very interesting, but as stated in the reader comments on the gizmag article, nothing new really.

Pretty much all tractor manufacturers today have some kind of variable transmission. They all share two common components; one or more planetary gears (to devide the driveline into hydraulic and mechanical side) and a hydraulic component that provides the variation of output speed for either the whole speed range or between traditional gears. Possibly the best known in the tractor world is the Fendt Vario which has been around from 1996 and with over 100.000 units produced. Take a look at the Vario, it is an interesting engineering feat.

Lurvio

Edit: Here's a pdf of 900-series Fendt, page 14 has the transmission layout.
www.fendt.com/