There’s always that one kid. The one who loves to take things apart just to put them back together. When you visit their house, you know you have to closely guard your electronics, lest they become the next experiment. For holidays, their wish list includes different sizes of screw drivers and thick pads of drafting paper. This kid can usually expound for hours on end about engine building or gear functioning. Sometimes, this kid can make you feel robbed of the adult of experience of getting to teach children about how the world works. If you have ever wanted to be able to keep up in a conversation with a gear-head in your life, and maybe even teach them a thing or two, keep reading to learn five cool facts about gears and custom gear manufacturing.
1) Gear 101 If you’re going to hold your own in this conversation, you first need to make sure you have a firm grasp on what a gear is. Most simply put, a gear is a tool that helps to transmit motion. It is one of the oldest ways to accomplish this task. You can find gears in a variety of types of machines, both simple and complex, to help things work better.
2) Some Important Vocabulary Within the world of gears, there are lots of varieties and each type of gear accomplishes something different. If you have a shaft mounted at a 90 degree angle, a bevel gear would be used. Bevel gears are shaped like a right circular cone and are very commonly used because they allow you to change the angle of motion. There are also worm gears, which look similar to a traditional screw and allow for the transmission of high levels of torque.
3) Custom is Key Because there are so many types of gears and lots of materials from which they can be made, custom gear manufacturing is important. The custom gear manufacturing industry relies on the ability to gain a deep understanding of the type of machine of system the gear is needed for and then creating the perfect gear for the job. Custom gear manufacturing is especially important for innovative designs, for which there may not be an existing gear to meet the need of the new design.
4) Gears Keep Us Going Gears are super important to not only the transmission of motion, but also to the transportation of people. A bevel gear, for example, may be found in a painting press or power plant, but is also used in automobiles and cars. Talk about versatility!
5) Historic Technology Even though gears are often involved in innovative design, hence the high demand for custom gears, gears are not a new technological innovation. Because of this, gears have played important roles in everything from military technology to the machines that propelled humans into space. This one piece of machinery holds a hugely important role in the advancement of technology.
If you prepare yourself with these facts, you may just have the opportunity to be the new most popular family member-just beware that you may need to block off a few hours if you open the door for this conversation with the gear lover in your life!