Infinitely variable drive unit - has pinions sliding on shafts and meshing with gear segments on disc face

摘要

The positive speed-increasing drive unit is steplessly adjustable, having input and output shafts running in bearings in a housing, a circular flat disc (11) being mounted on one of them (19, 21). On the disc face is an odd number of wedge-shaped gear segments (12) each with teeth running parallel to a diametral line bisecting the segment concerned, the segments being evenly spaced round the disc and leaving an odd number of intervening gaps, each opposite a segment. Two coaxial shafts (14, 15) are mounted independently of each other in the frame (10) above the disc face and in line with a diametral line of the disc. There are two pinions (16, 17) sliding on and rotating with the shafts, at the same radius from the disc centre, so that one of them is always positively engaged with a gear segment when the other is not.