People’s proud invention of gears was preceded by mindless evolution: The tiny points on the legs of juvenile planthopper insects move like intermeshing cogs. Those cogs in young Issus coleoptratus ...

, 'involute gears' and 'cycloid gears', based on the difference in tooth shape. Both types have their own advantages, but technology blogger lcamtuf explains the advantages of involute gears. A ...

Backlash, a clearance between mating gear teeth, is built into speed reducers to let the gears mesh without binding and to provide space for a film of lubricating oil between the teeth. This prevents ...

Some spare time recently got used-up designing a pair of involute gears – which, it transpires, is easy in principle, once certain almost-impossible-to-obtain facts have been gathered. There are ...

Gears fill the cases of automotive transmissions and are widely used in aerospace applications, but these simple tools are deceptively complex to manufacture. We thought it would be good to take a ...

This article was updated Feb. 28, 2023. It was originally published March 1, 2000. Planetary gears can supply high levels of torque and high-speed reduction. They are also relatively compact compared ...

MESHING together rotating gears, such as in a car’s gearbox, has long been thought of as a man-made solution to transmitting motion. But rather than a machine being the first to use gears, it seems ...