Gear speed is determined by the size and number of teeth on interconnected gears, expressed as a ratio or in RPM. Gears transfer power and move at a constant speed, with slower gears transferring more power. Gear speed affects power output and can lead to mechanical failure if a gear stalls.
Gear speed is a measure of how fast a gear rotates, often in relation to the rotations of other gears. The relative size of the gears in a gear system is a very tightly controlled factor. This is because gears are capable of transferring power from one system to another. The size of the gears directly affects the speed of the gear, which directly affects the amount of power moved from one area of the system to another. Gear speed is usually expressed in revolutions per minute (RPM) or as a ratio to some other system.
The basics of gear rotation are actually quite simple. Since gears have interlocking teeth, they are forced to move at a constant speed. If one gear stalls, all other linked gears do as well. This, in turn, stops any gear they’re connected to, which stops even more, and so on. The only alternative to shutdown is total mechanical failure; the gear teeth break or the gear itself breaks.
To determine the gear speed of two interconnected gears, all a person has to do is count the teeth. If the driven gear has 25 teeth and the displaced gear has 50, the gear ratio is 25:50 or 1:2. One revolution of the driven gear equals half of a revolution of the driven gear. This means that the driven gear moves twice as fast as the driven gear, and since the gears are irrevocably linked, it always will.
This ratio expresses not only the gear speed, but also the power. Since the driven gear spins faster than the driven gear, it transmits more power to the system. The energy the driven gear produces in two rotations is equal to the power the larger gear produces in one, so it has multiplied its available power by two. This is why lower gears in a car transfer more power to the wheels; Slower moving low gears have more power than faster moving high gears. The engine power is multiplied by the gear system ratio.
The other common way to express gear speed is RPM. This is usually a pretty simple process that involves counting how many revolutions a gear makes in one minute or finding the time it takes to make one rotation and multiplying or dividing that number in one minute. If a gear makes 1.5 revolutions per second, the user simply multiplies to find that it has an RPM of 90. If it makes one rotation every four minutes, the user will divide to find its RPM of 25.
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