Low friction worm drive with ball bearing

olaf-lampe · May 5, 2010

Worm drives are the most compact high reduction gears ever. The bad thing is the huge amount of friction.

A few years back I made a concept drawing of a ball bearing worm drive.
Thought it would be interesting enough to share it with the genius' members of ES.
Any comments welcome. I don't claim copyright, so feel free to build one

Maybe it even exists for real somewhere?
-Olaf

Miles · May 5, 2010

Looks great, Olaf. Why don't you build a prototype?

I bookmarked this, a while back: http://urobotics.urology.jhu.edu/projects/BW/
There are a few patents for ball worm devices.

amberwolf · May 5, 2010

I remember a tiny one of these in some ham radio from the 1930s, used for precision tuning. Never seen it in person, but I read of it once in a magazine (QST?) and once in a website about restoring old gear.

etard · May 7, 2010

That's freakin awesome!! Ceramic bearings could get a little pricey, but I really like this concept. Too bad there's a patent on things like this, but it shouldn't stop you from building and designing it for yourself, right?

olaf-lampe · May 8, 2010

etard said:
That's freakin awesome!! Ceramic bearings could get a little pricey, but I really like this concept. Too bad there's a patent on things like this, but it shouldn't stop you from building and designing it for yourself, right?

Thanks!
If you refer to Miles' linked ball worm drive: It has a complete different solution and their patent isn't covering my version.
Everyone feel free to build it

-Olaf

adrian_sm · May 8, 2010

I love the idea of ball bearing in a worm drive, bu I can't quite picture how the load points on the balls will let them roll.

Can you describe it for me.

- Adrian

liveforphysics · May 8, 2010

It reminds me a bit of the recirculating ball type steering used on junk cars since the 1950s (maybe earlier?)

Not exactly the same, but similar with the balls meshing the worm gear to cut friction down a bit.

adrian_sm · May 8, 2010

That setup I can see how it will work. But I think setup in the originial post will have the ball hitting the end of the oblong retainer, where as LFP's image allows the ball to roll out sideways and recirculate.

- Adrian

olaf-lampe · May 8, 2010

adrian_sm said:
I love the idea of ball bearing in a worm drive, bu I can't quite picture how the load points on the balls will let them roll.

Can you describe it for me.

- Adrian

Sorry, my technical english isn't worth a penny. Whenever I try to explain something here it takes hours to find the words.
The drawing was made to show the idea to some of my student colleages. It's not proven to work, not scale or anything. Also the drawing is not complete. But I won't make the drawing more complex than it is.
Now I'll try to translate 'oblong retainer' :lol:
-Olaf

Low friction worm drive with ball bearing

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