US Patent: 258,533
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| Adjusting-gearing
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Patentees:
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| Alexander Gordon (exact or similar names) - Cincinnati, OH |
| George T. Reiss (exact or similar names) - Hamilton, OH |
| Manufacturer: |
| Not known to have been produced |
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Patent Dates:
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| Applied: |
Apr. 08, 1882 |
| Granted: |
May 23, 1882 |
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Jeff Joslin
Vintage Machinery entry for Niles Tool Works
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Description: |
| This is an early instantiation of the "sensitive drill" friction-drive mechanism, which has a metal disk mounted on the end of the input shaft, and a rubber disk at right angles and connected to the output shaft. The rim of the rubber disk rubs against the metal disk, and is forced to rotate when the metal disk rotates. The rubber disk can be moved longitudinally along its shaft (which coincides with a diameter of the metal disk), varying the speed of the rubber disk's rotation. If the rubber disk crosses the center point of the metal disk then its rotations stops and reverses. As a method of power transmission, the idea is an old one, and this patent does not cover that specific idea. In fact, an 1861 US patent, 33,283, mentions this type of mechanism as already being known: "The only way that friction-gearing has heretofore been applied to accomplish a change of velocity between two limits of speed is where a wheel is pressed against a face-plate whose axle is at right angles to the axis of the wheel, and the relative speed of the two shafts is governed by the position occupied by the wheel on the face-plate at a greater or less distance from its center..." We have searched all prior US patents of variable-speed friction-drive mechanisms, and this basic idea was never granted a US patent. It is, of course, possible that it was patented elsewhere. |
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