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Strain Wave Gear with Timing Belts

Strain wave or harmonic drive gears are cool. As a cheap analog for metal or flex filament splined cup, try using timing belts.

Similar projects worth following
UPDATE: Now includes hypocycloidal gears!

Strain wave gears offer the ability for reasonable speed to torque conversion for cheap motors like smaller steppers and RC servos. This could make the gear a useful part of a 3D printed/home fabricated robot arm or rotary table. In theory, there is minimal backlash, compared to standard gears, and they can be rather compact for the high gear ratios they achieve.

The first key problem I see for those wanting to make one of these gears with a 3D printer is that the splined "cup" part of the design needs to be flexible and even if you master the printing of it in flexible filaments, this part is unlikely to hold up to the bending cycles required for a useful lifespan.

Enter timing belts. They are effectively "bendy gears". Turn a closed timing belt inside out and you have the makings of the splined cup. The next key challenge is rigidity...

I posted a proof of concept video here: And the files to print your own version of this simple gear are here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2013137

Hackaday.io is the perfect place to ask for help taking this concept and overcoming remaining challenges to making this suitable for homebrew robots:

  • What's the best way to make this rigid enough to be the first and/or second degree of freedom in an arm? All sorts of slewing moments to overcome.
  • What range of prime movers can we use here - geared DC motors, steppers, RC servos modified for continuous rotation?
  • Could closed loop systems be easily integrated? E.g. move the potentiometer from the continuous rotation servo onto the axis of the gear, coupled to the two main gears (not the wave generator) for greater control at low expense.

I'd love to accept project team members - I'm not precious about this at all. All I would ask is that if you have the ability to try out your idea please do that and post it afterwards rather than filling the comments with hypothetical options. If you don't have the means to try something yourself, by all means use the comments to make suggestions.

  • Teardown: rough first prototype HTD 3M hypocycloidal

    Simon Merrett02/08/2018 at 23:15 2 comments

    I thought some who are following along may want to see the internals of one of the gears as the YouTube videos aren't the easiest format to do detail.

    BLUF, this gear failed to produce torque beyond the same torque that the first hypocycloidal gear produced, at a torque ratio of 1:14. The difference here was that the belt/cycloid discs started skipping past each other, rather than the motor stalling. I'm not sure whether this was wholly damning of the use of timing belt because:

    • The belt was only gripped on one side - a more patient design (which could be bothered to wait for bearings in the mail) would have gripped the belt along both edges.
    • The belt was HTD 3M, with a tooth depth of 1.2 mm. This means a small amount of play in the cam/cycloid disc and wider assembly could lead more easily to skipped progression. HTD 5M could perhaps improve this.
    • My lack of patience during design meant that there were more structural parts than required (e.g. the cross brace holding the bearing on the front) which a more considered design could integrate with other printed parts, reducing the opportunity for flex and misalignment at the interfaces.

    Read to the bottom for a head's up on what I'm planning to try next

    The assembled assembly

    This shows that I have been more thoughful about applying the torque through a lever (6mm threaded rod - v.bendy, which is pleasing as it makes it look like it's lifting a large mass when only small one's are attached - a good visual cue for the torque) that is lined up better with the supporting bearings than the first prototypes which had it offset from the bearings, on the outer face.

    A difference, which I think may be significant because it allows the outer ring to be the output drive, is that the motor is floating inside the main 6011 bearing, so the outer ring is usable as an output now. This means the internals can be well supported from either side, as you might desire in a robot arm. Here, the stepper motor body is clamped to the bench but you could easily extend the plate it bolts to, down to a base. There's an opportunity to use a larger bearing on this side and extend the plate inside (you can just see the countersunk screws in the corners) to the outside and supporting frames. You can see the static plate which binds what are usually the output pins here:

    As usual, the M3 square nut and grub screw do sufficiently well to stop the motor shaft flat from freely rotating without driving the cam, although some rotation has clearly happened.

    Here, you can see what's inside when you remove the ring which is holding the HTD belt by one edge:

    The square "output" pin plate is bolted to the mounting holes in the stepper motor's body.

    In profile:

    Now remove the white output ring; you can start to see the very slight eccentricity of the cam. Because it only varied by 0.6 off-centre in each direction, it was able to be printed as one piece. However, the bottom bearing would only go on from the underside.

    All the parts so far:

    Now, the "output" pins are made from 5mm OD alu standoff/spacers from electronic component suppliers like RS Components. Not too expensive and they allow some rotation in a bushing mode. However, on M3 threads they do have some play. This is a shot where you can see how that output/stator pin assembly looks:

    Here's what you get when the cycloid disc and cam shaft sub-assembly come off:

    And here's a view of the main ring bearing mount for the stepper motor (right), along with the re-assembled cycloid disc/stator pin sub-assembly (left):

    Rear view, as above but with the motor installed and the white outer (output) ring clamped in place around the outer bearing race to the black outer ring:

    That's all the photos for now. Hope they were of interest to some of you. 

    Additional point of interest is that my original four output holes in each cycloid disc were too large and it led to slop of a degree or few in the output. This was improved to no noticeable slop when I reprinted those two discs...

    Read more »

  • Catch up

    Simon Merrett02/02/2018 at 22:33 3 comments

    This video is a summary of my progress over the last few months. Time to take stock and share. Comments are very welcome but collaborators are even better!

  • Hypocycloidal gear with timing belts?

    Simon Merrett01/26/2018 at 03:42 9 comments

    Is this the next logical step? I was surprised by the torque efficiency of the hypocycloidal gear I made in the Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation log, so perhaps it's worth pursuing for a bit. Until today, in conversation with @Dan Royer I hadn't realised that a possible advantage of these hypocycloidal and strain wave gears is that when you want to DIY one you can design it so the output and fixed part are transferring torque relatively far from the axis compared to  a gear with a conventional shaft output. 

    The setup above is just a concept tester, made with a 210mm (70 tooth) HTD 3M continuous belt, constrained within a printed PLA ring that has a toothed recess in the base to hold the belt in place and prevent it from rotating, relative to the outer ring. The back face of the outer ring is bolted to the NEMA 17 stepper motor housing in the usual four holes.

    The belt teeth take the place of the ring pins in a conventional hypocycloidal gear. The cycloidal disc has 69 teeth, hence this is a 69:1 gear ratio.

    This could be scaled up to a 100:1 with a belt length of 303mm and a diameter around 100mm. 100:1 would, if the components handle the forces, get the baseline NEMA 17 with 59 Ncm holding torque to the order of 20 Nm being targeted by #5+ Axis Robot Arm Study No.5. If the parts can't take it (which I imagine they won't) we could step up to HTD 5M and the diameter of the belt would be around 160mm.

    Promise I'll get round to showing the strain wave gears soon. Let me know what you think of this approach in the comments.

  • Hesitation, repetition and deviation

    Simon Merrett01/23/2018 at 03:12 11 comments

    Well, it's been a while...

    ...sorry about that. Definitely counts as hesitation (ps the title is tribute to the British comedy radio contest called Just a Minute).

    This log may not be satisfying to everyone following the project. Just to update you, I returned my attention to this project in December when @Dan Royer asked about whether it could be used in his new design of robot arm. You may recall that only @Ken Kaiser had put a motor in his gear up to this point. What you didn't know was that shortly after my "getting stronger" log/video, I made a version of the strain wave gear with a large bearing (a 6011 ZZ 55mm X 90mm X 18mm ) and built it around a "standard" NEMA 17, 59 Ncm stepper motor frequently found in 3D printers. I'll show that in a future log as that's the repetition part (more strain wave gears and variations upon the design of the wave generator).

    In this log, I want to share with you the deviation part - I made a hypocycloidal gear. With a motor. The very same model of motor I put in my motorised strain wave gear. The reason, you see, for heading off down the hypocycloidal gear route is because on the one hand you have people showing home-machined hypocycloidal gears on YouTube that appear to work very nicely and on the other hand you have #5+ Axis Robot Arm having to give up on $3k development because they couldn't get theirs to work. What was the difference? Well one aspect was load. The people on YouTube (like ZincBoy or RockyMountains2001) aren't putting their gears under load. Dan's robot arm needs to be able to apply forces both to lift its own weigh but also to have an effect on its environment.

    So, the basic designs online have one cycloidal disc (see the diagram in Dan's project log for common terms). Dan also complained that as soon as load was applied to his developmental gear, there was binding between the cycloidal disc and the ring gear pins. I also happened to see AvE's teardown of a nice Sumitomo cyclo gearbox / torque multiplier where he explained that a second cycloidal disc was used 180° out of phase with the first one, to prevent vibrations at high speed. 

    These two got me thinking and I decided to use a second cycloidal disc and bearings for the ring gear pins. Here's a single disc prototype:

    You can see here how there are 10 ring pins/bearings. The cycloidal disc has 9 "teeth" or nodes, so that's a 9:1 ratio (I think). Now encouraged with this version, I designed another version with two discs and 11 nodes on each disc (12 ring bearings). I used four 6805 Thin Section Deep Groove Ball Bearing 25x37x7mm, which went in a stack of (from stepper body outwards) output disc backplate, cycloidal disc 1, cycloidal disc 2, output disc ( with output rollers x 3 mounted. You will notice that the diagrams and models rarely show the output disc/shaft because they tend to prevent you from seeing the mechanism of the cycloid discs following their hypnotic, eccentric path. However, if you're going to harness the torque, you need the output disc/shaft. The other foreign part name in that bearing stack was "output disc backplate". I put an almost identical disc to the output disc behind both cycloidal discs for the shafts of the output shaft rollers to screw into and add strength to the output. Here's a photo of assembly after the first cycloidal disc went on (of an interim prototype, so you can't see any output disc backplate):

    The two holes either side of the shaft are locating and clamping holes for the stack of eccentric and centred discs that go on top. This is especially important because the shaft isn't long enough for four 6805 bearings stacked up! You need to take care with this stack arrangement that the holes are lined up either side of the shaft flat face, so that the clamping nut/grub screw can locate the flat later.

    Motorisation

    So now we want to see how much torque we can convert from our stepper motor. But what are we comparing this gear to?...

    Read more »

  • Getting stronger

    Simon Merrett04/24/2017 at 01:38 4 comments

    Here's a stronger version of the first design revision which uses a lazy susan bearing (the video thumbnail might show the proof of concept - watch the video to see the new design).

    There are promising signs this could be useful in a compact arrangement, e.g. a small robot arm base. It felt like there was room to reduce the friction but you can't ask too much too soon! Where should we go next with this?

  • Gear model printed, powered by a stepper

    Ken Kaiser04/05/2017 at 04:22 1 comment

    Overview

    A 3D printed strain wave gear, using a HTD 300-5M-20 and 608 bearings. The belt has 60 teeth, for 30 revolutions of stepper the outer gear rotates once, resulting in a -30:1 gear ratio.

    Bill of materials

    Material Quantity Dimensions
    HTD belt 1 300-5M-20 closed loop, 300mm circumference, 5mm tooth pitch, 20mm wide
    bearings 4 608, OD 22mm outer diameter, ID 8mm core, and 7mm wide
    3D printed 1 PLA, not the best material, but forgiving
    set screw 2 3mm nuts with set screws
    snap ring 2 8mm
    stepper 1 nema 17
    screws 4 M3 screws to attach stepper to gear


    Design

    Using the parametric design I printed exactly the STL output. The parametric model was designed and mainly checked against an HTD 300-5M-20 that I used here. I added space for nuts on the wave generator and set screws. To assemble the wave generator 3D-printed pins for the bearings with a spot for snap rings.

    HTD Belt Tooth spacing / depth
    8M 8mm / 3.38mm
    5M 5mm / 2.06mm
    3M 3mm / 1.17mm
    The picture shows the
    belt teeth against a
    millimeter tape.
    So far is seems that
    3M belts require the
    gear to be too precise
    and don't deal with
    forces, 5M seems
    like a good mix for
    prototypes.

    Using a 20mm wide belt, gear parts should be less than 10mm each when the sides are assembled there isn't friction between the two halves.

    Control

    I used a Arduino MKR1000 using the Timer5 library, controlled by the Blynk app. The sketch controlled a DRV8825 stepper module. I can make details available upon request. Here is the configuration of the Blynk app:

    Measurements

    Torque

    I can feel there is more torque on the gear output. What is an effective way to measure torque? I have 5M and 8M and belts of different diameters.

    Current

    I would want the stepper speed and current to the controlled/captured at the same time. A current sensing resistor supplying the input of an op-amp, conditioned, then captured by the ADC, should work but is there an easier/better way?

    Resolution

    A laser diode mounted on the gear output pointed at a wall would allow measurements to find the effective repeatable resolution. Then finding out what force results in what loss of resolution or repeatability.

  • CNC cut test gear based on the parametric generator

    Simon Merrett03/27/2017 at 18:21 7 comments

    I just wanted to say that I've tried cutting the HTD 5MM mount ring in my new CNC in 9mm plywood and it seems that when I place it over my first design revision there's a 1-2mm gap/play between the belt and gear. This isn't supposed to reflect at all on Ken's amazing work with the parametric generator, especially as it's mounting his design (at least of the tooth profile) on mine. But another initial build also reported some play, so I thought I'd post early findings.

    Please ignore the missing teeth - I was recycling previously-cut scrap plywood and I don't think the missing sections contributed to the play I report above, even though the photo shows the wave generator aligned with a missing portion of the gear.

    Has anyone else tried printing/cutting any gears? I quite like the speed of the CNC as it took about 23 mins to make this ring, which is going to be much more suitable for a "rigid" version of this gear than the 3D printed one I started with (and about twice as fast). There's room for both techniques but strength is definitely going to be helped by a larger outer diameter on the mount gear and an additive process is going to lag behind a wasting process when making larger parts from sheet stock, in this scenario.

    [edit 22:31 27/3/17]

    In response to Florian's comments, I thought I'd add a couple of screenshots comparing the CAD from the parametric generator and my first revision design.

    In the parametric generator, the diameter around the inner points of the teeth is 100.47mm and in mine it's 100mm. The gap for the belt teeth is narrower in mine (grey) than in the parametric generator (purple).

    Anyway, the beauty of a parametric generator is that you can easily change all of this!

  • Gear design

    Ken Kaiser02/15/2017 at 23:25 1 comment

    This is based on the design of a strain wave gear, but it not an exact copy of a strain wave gear. Strain wave gears characteristically have an oval wave generator, a flex spline cup, and a circular spline. The wave generator engages 1/3 or more of the teeth at the same time. It does not seem attainable to engage that proportion of teeth in this current design.

    The input gear that matches the belt teeth is in the back dark blue/purple, the output gear with +2 teeth is pink.

    As you can see, the second bearing would be forcing the belt into 1/3 of the tooth of the outer gear, at the gears are positioned right next to each other. The belt tooth is directly over the output gear tooth at tooth 15 into a 60 tooth belt, a belt that is 300mm long with 5mm pitch.

    The first revision increases the area that would engage from wider bearing(s) and belt. What is the force transmitted by a single tooth?

    This design is a game changer, but we have to test torque. Even if this design can't handle torque, there is optic positioning, and anything that needs precision movement. I can see the times where I'd trade the speed and torque of a 200 step stepper to get 6000 steps of resolution from the simple gear in the videos.

  • Parametric modeling

    Ken Kaiser02/15/2017 at 01:41 1 comment

    Have your design parametrically generated for you. Belt, bearings, export STL to print, and assemble with hardware.

    The model still needs some debugging, and set space for mounting hardware.

    I didn't make this a more collaborative design, because I wasn't sure l could actually contribute anything. There are juggernauts of talent, having years of specialized training or 30 years of experience (or both) in a field, which is awesome but intimidating. I am pleased with how it turned out, but I don't imagine that it can't be vastly improved, so an obvious comment to you might make a huge difference to me and this project. As well, I am an example that anyone can contribute to this project so please do, join and contribute.

    The model is not finished. I am going to break out specific posts in the coming days, specifically on the design of the tooth gears and the center wave generator. What is known so far, what are the trade offs, and what can be worked on in the future, keep up to date with this project if it interests you.

    Link to the model you can also search public documents for 'strain wave gear' and copy from there. https://cad.onshape.com/documents/589ec3b62ec4e50f8780f313/w/e3bc2d0aadf1fac7a95c44f8/e/b461997c4947a96f94b88547

  • Video of the latest version

    Simon Merrett01/17/2017 at 00:52 3 comments

    This is a video where I try and explain what I meant in the first project log a little better.

    So, what should the next version (to try and transmit torque while resisting slewing forces etc) look like?

View all 11 project logs

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Discussions

Michael G wrote 05/25/2019 at 23:32 point

Very clever -- how does these hold up to moment loads (cantilevered force off one side)?

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Simon Merrett wrote 05/26/2019 at 08:23 point

https://hackaday.io/project/19405/log/86936-catch-up

Is probably the best place to look. There are definitely better options out there on HaD.io for low backlash, high ratio gearing.

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Florian Festi wrote 12/20/2017 at 11:50 point

The issue I see with the current model is that it applies a twisting force on the belt. This is something the belt - which is for tension only - is just not made for. So I thought may be we could strengthen it with a steel band glued to the back. If the steel band is wide enough we could just nail it on a round disk at the bottom instead of pressing the teeth into a second ring gear. Suddenly this looks awfully close to a harmonic drive.

So where to get the proper steel band and how to close it into a loop? May be use a very thin sheet and clue multiple turns together and the grind the seams flat? May be using a thin walled tube? May be just use a tin can? Or a plastic bottle or cup or (yogurt) bucket. We just need one where we can find a fitting belt. A (returnable) PET bottle could be shrunk with heat if needed and should be strong enough for some usable loads.

There are probably some even better things to make a harmonic drive out of.

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Simon Merrett wrote 12/20/2017 at 23:22 point

They all sound good - aluminum drinks can too perhaps. I love the ghetto / low price approach. I think coupling to, and support of, the shaft is pretty important to think through. 

With my most recent version (not yet video'd but quite old now) the rigidity of the assembly is clearly a key factor in the success of the gear in producing torque without slipping. This leads to the need for pressure from the roller arm to push the belt onto the gear ring. In turn, this results in friction and the stepper motor struggles to overcome this when the output is loaded with a moment/torque. 

The idea I had to use for Dan was a rigid internal (inner facing teeth) gear ring. Use a normal 16t or 20t gear to drive a belt which is 'inverted' using two bearings to 'change direction' (so the teeth face outwards) and a third bearing to complete the triangle. Then this triangle is adjusted so that the outward facing teeth mesh at three points of the gear ring. For a 2mm belt pitch a 10:1 would mean a 16t drive gear would require a 320mm circumference - around 100mm diameter. The possible benefit of this would be to make a reasonably compact unit but it may not be much smaller than a standard belt around two wheels. 

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Dan Royer wrote 12/14/2017 at 18:54 point

Would you be willing to attempt a use case, please?  The largest gearing on my robot arm needs to handle 20Nm on the output shaft.  Can you show your gearbox attached to a NEMA17 moving 20Nm?  I got this torque value from a point mass simulation of my goal machine: https://github.com/MarginallyClever/armTorqueCalculator

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Simon Merrett wrote 12/16/2017 at 20:35 point

@Dan Royer I know the current version won't achieve this but I have a slightly different idea I have been thinking about trying. Can you confirm if a 45Ncm stepper at 24V is OK? I know we can get 60-65Ncm NEMA 17s but all mine are employed in my printer! 

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Florian Festi wrote 10/27/2017 at 10:18 point

So many new contributors! Any news about the gear itself?

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Simon Merrett wrote 12/30/2017 at 21:24 point

Not yet - given the recent interest I'm going to endeavour to at least video the version (I think my fourth version) that is NEMA 17 drive. It's not going to meet @Dan Royer 's use case, so I need to think about that.

I have ordered a HTD 3M 210 belt (70 teeth) which seems to me like it would fit around an aluminium drinks can at 66mm dia. As @Ken Kaiser said, HTD 5M is probably better for torque transfer but at small diameter it makes decent ratios difficult.

Anyone else played around with relevant stuff? 

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Dan DWRobotics wrote 07/20/2017 at 19:24 point

This is great. I had thought of doing something quite similar, although I was thinking to use 3D printed ninja flex belts for the flex spline.

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Gravis wrote 07/20/2017 at 17:59 point

Arg!  Can someone please convert the parameteric generator to OpenSCAD?  That onshape site doesn't seem to have a way to download without joining their cult.

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Simon Merrett wrote 07/21/2017 at 11:26 point

If you can view the "document" on Onshape without logging in (which I think you can) you can copy the code (I'm in Chrome, using mouse to highlight code and Ctrl+C to copy) from the Featurescript tabs (HTD Gear, HTD Belt, Generator and bearings), then you can work out how to make it in OpenSCAD yourself, with no Onshape account required.

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Gravis wrote 07/21/2017 at 17:55 point

Excellent!  Now to learn FeatureScript. -_-

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Garth S. wrote 07/06/2017 at 07:39 point

With sufficient torque, can this be driven in reverse, for higher RPM?

Thank you for sharing.

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Simon Merrett wrote 07/06/2017 at 13:13 point

Garth, you're welcome but from my knowledge there's no way to reverse this. In fact it would make a "trainable" robot joint difficult. 

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Garth S. wrote 07/07/2017 at 07:44 point

Thanks!

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toms wrote 04/13/2017 at 14:04 point

amazing project. I plan to start sourcing parts for replicating it. the need for harmonic drives becomes obvious when you look at videos of (hobby) robot arms based on servos and see how the movement is shaky and jittery, even with $15-20 servos. for proof of concept I would not just show the gear lifting something with a pulley but rather connect it to a lever with a weight at the end, and have the lever move back and forth at different speeds.

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Ken Kaiser wrote 04/17/2017 at 23:51 point

When I happened upon this project right after it started, and I thought the same thing.  I have the parts to build a Lite Arm i2 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:480446 then it will be remixing to be powered by strain wave gears instead of servos. Could be a long build with my schedule- anything I should know or tips to share?

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Simon Merrett wrote 04/18/2017 at 22:37 point

I'd also add it's worth bearing in mind a pair of insightful comments on strain wave gears when this was featured on the HaD Blog: 

http://hackaday.com/2017/01/17/3d-printed-strain-wave-gear-needs-your-help/#comment-3369375

http://hackaday.com/2017/01/17/3d-printed-strain-wave-gear-needs-your-help/#comment-3373242

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Florian Festi wrote 03/28/2017 at 21:39 point

More stupid ideas:

The gear ratio could increase even further by turning this into a kinda planetary gear. Of course you could just bolt a planetary gear on top that drives the strain wave generator, but that'd add the complexity of a full planetary gear. So there is no real point.

But there is another way of doing it: Have a sun gear that drives the rollers of the wave generators. For this the rollers would need to be fixed to planet gears. So you basically have stepped planets: one step being a gear that's meshed with the sun gear and the other step is the flat roller rolling on the belt. So there is no ring gear needed. This is of course at the cost of only having friction transmission between the planets and the ring. But that should be fine as there is not much torque transferred there and there is another 1:31 stage behind.

As the planet gears could stick over the ring gears you can add another reduction between the planet gears and the roller of the strain wave. So like regular planetary gears with stepped planets you have an extended range of possible gear ratios.

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Simon Merrett wrote 03/28/2017 at 21:44 point

I like that idea. So a common challenge to both the planetary and belt approach is to couple the two ring gears with suitable bearings to resist slewing loads.

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Florian Festi wrote 03/28/2017 at 21:07 point

I wonder if some one could make a quick test on the torque gain of the gear. It doesn't have to be super precise. Just a rough estimate if the 1:31 reduction is also yielding an similar increase in torque (with >20 already being a good result IMHO). Even if the slack cannot be completely eliminated due to the softness of the belt this kind of gear would still be very useful for some applications like driving wheels on a vehicle. But this assumes that it has reasonable mechanical efficiency.

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Ken Kaiser wrote 04/17/2017 at 23:59 point

Three weeks after I built one, I finally posted an update. I was mainly delaying because I wanted to have torque tests, but they wouldn't count for much without the current (power) the motor is driving the load with. 

That would tell you what the failure point of the design is. If a stepper directly driving a load stalls a 2A of current, and the same motor fails to move a geared load- if it fails at the same 2A it is the max the motor can do, but if it stops at 1.5A then there are further optimizations to the gear design be made. 

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Florian Festi wrote 03/22/2017 at 20:16 point

This looks like it could also be done with a laser cutter which would allow much faster cycles during development. I am on vacation right now so i can't really help right now. But may be some one knows someone how knows someone with a laser cutter...

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delmar1192005 wrote 02/15/2017 at 04:22 point

I have worked with commercial Harmonic drive and the tooth arrangements have always been 50-51, 100-101 , 200-201, they always seem to be one tooth difference. Great idea you've got going there, cant wait to get my 3d printer so i can give it a try.

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Simon Merrett wrote 02/26/2017 at 07:53 point

Ken's done a great job with the Onshape generator - we'd love to hear how you get on once the printer arrives. I don't have any experience with commercial gears so your views will be valuable. 

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Florian Festi wrote 03/22/2017 at 20:13 point

So the wave generator is assymmetrical? Pushing on just one side?

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Simon Merrett wrote 03/23/2017 at 15:44 point

No, it's symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Two opposing areas of contact and two larger,  opposing areas with no belt-tooth contact separating them. The YouTube videos might help. 

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Florian Festi wrote 03/23/2017 at 19:48 point

Sorry, this reply system is not for me. My question above was meant for delmar1192005. The drive here has 60-62 teeth so n to n+2 so the wave generator can be symmetrical. delmar has been talking about 50-51, 100-101 , 200-201 so symmetrical wave generator should not work as far as I get the concept. It is also possible that those are not actual teeth numbers but gear rations with the actual teeth numbers being twice - allowing for a symmetrical wave generator.

It would be interesting to know whether commercial drives sacrifice symmetry for a factor 2 gear ratio increase or not.

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Simon Merrett wrote 03/24/2017 at 14:33 point

Ah, I see. The comments don't even let me reply to your last message.  I understand your question and yes, only delmar1192005 can answer!

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fendrikarmin wrote 02/05/2017 at 10:52 point

Timing belt arrives on next week, I'll hook the system up to a stepper, and see how the belt handles the load. I really hope it will do well...

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Ken Kaiser wrote 02/15/2017 at 01:45 point

Just posted an update, if you've already designed yours, I'd be interested how the measurements line up. Or test out the design.

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fendrikarmin wrote 03/04/2017 at 16:08 point

I built it, and it works. I designed it for a 3mm pitch belt, but found an issue: the belt, even under relatively small load twists a little, and it generates an undesirable "play".

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Ken Kaiser wrote 03/04/2017 at 19:44 point

(In reply to your build comment, wouldn't let replies nest that deep)

Awesome! Not the play, but the build, and applying a load. Have you loaded the gear until it stops working? Ideas on how to mitigate/eliminate the play? More contact area with the bearings, tighter gear measurements could be lessen the play, do you think those would work? The gear tooth width is based off of a straight belt, if under stress the teeth diameter changes or the flexibility affects the belt tooth width, those measurements should change.

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drew wrote 01/19/2017 at 01:07 point

I'm not ready to try making one of these myself but if I can make a suggestion. By using a larger diameter roller on the wave generator you would have more teeth engaged at once. You could still use 608 bearings in the rollers just fabricate something larger with a hole for the bearing.

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Simon Merrett wrote 01/19/2017 at 02:05 point

Absolutely correct! Barton Dring has an oval wave generator with an array of smaller bearings around the circumference. Because to have a different tooth count on each ring at the same diameter requires at least one of the gears to have tooth spacing which does not match the belt pitch, unfortunately we can't have a section of the belt in full contact with the rings. A gradual engagement and disengagement is needed and achieved by the tighter curve of the wave generator ends.

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tmk wrote 01/18/2017 at 21:15 point

Looks like quite a clever solution. I'll probably be iterating on this myself. Thanks for sharing it!

I've got a CNC mill and will probably use aluminum for the parts. I was concerned about using aluminum for the flexible part, and this solves it nicely.

Some sort of outer ring for stability, possibly with roller bearings (ground pins?) would be one way to avoid slop.

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Simon Merrett wrote 01/18/2017 at 21:27 point

Great - that's exactly what I hoped someone would do. My CNC router is mid-build! For a printed version the gear rings could be inserted into large holes cut from e.g. ply or MDF to reduce deformation. For alu plate, one or more pieces to make up each ring could be bolted to another plate, which then has a smaller shaft access/bearing hole cut in the centre. This plate could be part of the base/arm bracket.

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Simon Merrett wrote 01/17/2017 at 20:31 point

Hi everyone, thanks for all the likes and follows, both up to this point and in future. Please accept my apologies for not individually thanking all of you as the HaD.io emails suggest but my feed gets rather filled with project teams thanking individuals. I thought this way would be less annoying for everyone.

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Ken Kaiser wrote 01/18/2017 at 01:00 point

No, thank you, so clever. Making it accessible by sourcing available materials is what it's all about. I'd sign up to work on this but my 3D printer is still 6+ weeks away. You could go so deep with documenting everything. I can think of so many variables: rpm before it skips, bearing size, number of teeth (a few different sizes to infer the rest), belt width to torque transfer, lifetime vs. material, lifetime vs. operating rpm, etc.

Makes sense to look at the general design before perfecting it, your v2 seems so much better than v1.

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Simon Merrett wrote 01/18/2017 at 08:50 point

Thanks Ken - your point about skipping is interesting. I understand that if the belt slipped one tooth, the gap between belt and gear which allows the waves travel round would be reduced or disappear, preventing the gear from working. Worth designing to reduce the likelihood of that scenario! 

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Daniel S. wrote 01/18/2017 at 08:02 point

First thing that comes to mind is making a PoC of a practical application. Lifting something very heavy with only 3D printed parts and skateboard bearings would make for a great viral video, perhaps. Not only for the sake of going viral, but to attract others to come work on the project as well. The updated version you posted yesterday has a whole extra layer of cleverness that makes this a compelling project to me.

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Simon Merrett wrote 01/18/2017 at 08:56 point

I agree with you on making a video of the first lifting version. I'm casting around for ideas on the bearing and mounting configuration. Keeping it to 608s would be challenging but definitely more attention-grabbing due to the perception of their availability. 

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