Gears are typically used for one of four different reasons:
Gear ratios are important to understand the 2nd of the 4 reasons.
Most gear that you see in real life have teeth. The teeth have three advantages:
If you watch a set of gears, you can see the ratio:
For example, if the ratio between two gears is 2:1, every time the larger gear goes around once, the smaller gear goes around twice.
If both gears had the same diameter, they would rotate at the same speed but in opposite directions.
- To reverse the direction of rotation
- To increase or decrease the speed of rotation
- To move a rotational motion to a different axis
- To keep the rotation of two axes synchronized
Gear ratios are important to understand the 2nd of the 4 reasons.
Most gear that you see in real life have teeth. The teeth have three advantages:
- They prevent slipping between the gears. This way, axles connected by gears are always synchronized exactly with one another.
- They make it easy to determine exact gear ratios. You just count the number of teeth in the two gears and divide. So if one gear has 60 teeth and
another has 20, the gear ratio when these two gears are connected together is 3:1.
If you watch a set of gears, you can see the ratio:
For example, if the ratio between two gears is 2:1, every time the larger gear goes around once, the smaller gear goes around twice.
If both gears had the same diameter, they would rotate at the same speed but in opposite directions.