Simple Power Transmission Unit for Intermeshing and Interleaving Rotorcraft

[Rotor Rooter]

This thread is just to put the following invention into the public domain; so that anyone may use it.
Ball Worm & Wheel Reducer (http://www.UniCopter.com/1509.html)

Criticism or comments requested. http://www.unicopter.com/Flame-thrower.gif

Dave J.

[Rotor Rooter]

Some thoughts in respect to perhaps the first piloted electric helicopter.


The intermeshing configuration (K-max) probably represents the best lift-to-power ratio of the current rotorcraft configurations.


It has been mentioned that "Electric RC helis are more powerful than nitro or gas helis, nowdays, but that's only true up to a certain size."


The intermeshing SynchroLite was designed to comply with the lightest category that I know of; the FAA part 103.


The reality of 'Ball-worm & Wheel gears' will offer the intermeshing configuration a single, compact, lightweight, and efficient, (3-gear only) transmission.

Could there be a better rotorcraft platform in which to insert the precursors of the coming explosion in electric motor and battery technology?

[PW_Plack]

Dave,

I'd be concerned about the autorotation failure mode. The document suggests that a conventional worm drive can be "back-driven" by the output shaft at ratios as high as 10:1, and that the worm/ball system could autorotate at even higher reduction ratios. I think they're making a quantum leap.

Given the high friction in any worm gear reducer when driven by the output shaft, I'm not sure autorotation would even be possible.

If it were carrying my butt into the air, I think I'd want the worm driving a fourth gear, coupled through a sprag clutch to one gear of a meshed pair, which then turned the counter-rotating rotor shafts. That would allow a very low-friction mode for autorotation, yet preserve rotor sync and much of the simplicity.

To be fair, current small piston helicopters would not need reduction ratios of 10:1. An engine turning 2500 RPM with a rotor RPM of 500 is only 5:1, which may be a ratio too low to make a worm drive practical.

[Rotor Rooter]

Paul,

Thanks for expressing your valid concerns. One of the advantages of the Internet is its ability for people to put forward half-baked ideas and allow others with more knowledge, in a diversity of fields, to constructively critique and make suggestions.

It appears that there are a dozen patents related to a ball-worm and gear, however, I have only been able to find one place where it has actually been used. Your points strongly support the idea of reverting to conventional spiral bevel gears. (http://www.unicopter.com/1319.html)


This is a consideration for the general arrangement (http://www.unicopter.com/Electric_UniCopter.html) where the electric motor would be applied. Initially the propeller would not be included and the rotors would probably be 2-blade teetering. Everything to get maximum lift for minimum power.


Thanks again

Dave

[Victor Duarte]

Dave,
with all you knowledge, the amount of research you did, you should be able to design a very interesting gyro.
Why don't you try it ?
Once you will see it fly, you will ask "why should i need a synchropter" :D

cheers

[Rotor Rooter]

Victor,

But I am working on a gyro. http://www.unicopter.com/Cry.gif

All the current work could be called, 'a helicopter with forward thrust' or 'a gyrocopter with partial power' :D

Dave

[Victor Duarte]

Sorry Dave,
i didn't mean to make you cry...i'm a bad bad boy.

well.. the partial power thing is indeed the next major improvement that the gyro community is waiting.
The forward thrust is what makes an helicopter become a gyrocopter :D
But i don't get it.. why are you talking about a synchropter ?
cheers

[Rotor Rooter]

OK, but this is going to make you cry.

Because, IMHO, for a single rotor to provide sufficient thrust in an efficient manner, it will have to do it mechanically.

This fuselage-generated torque has to be offset.

One way is to use a tail rotor. A short answer about the tail rotor (http://www.unicopter.com/B329.html#Tail_Rotor)

The better way is to use two main rotors. Lateral symmetry is the way that nature's creatures and man's vehicles interact with their environment. (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=218739&highlight=symmetry)

[quadrirotor]

Two years later or earlier! post #126
http://www.rotaryforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2105&page=4

[Rotor Rooter]

Quadrirotor,

In 1944, Igor I. Sikorsky wrote in his autobiography "that there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that within one or two decades hundreds of thousands of direct lift machines [helicopters] will be traveling through the air."

Unfortunately, today there is only one civilian helicopter for every half-million people. I strongly suggest that Igor was a principal contributor to the failure of his own prediction.

It is stated that he wanted to build a helicopter, which was different from the existing configurations in Europe. Igor's eagerness to get something off the ground, combined with his limited understanding of flight-controls, resulted in a helicopter with three tail-rotors.

Sixty years of fan-on-tail helicopters might be considered as a classic example of where engineering was subordinated to marketing.

Dave

[quadrirotor]

As VHS instead of Béta Max...
I.B.M. comp instead of Aple...etc...Check out for HD DVD!...

[Rotor Rooter]

I just found this in a July 1, 2005 Rotor & Wing article while digging for information on the Advancing Blade Concept. :rolleyes:


Make no mistake about it, a technological initiative's prospects depend as much on its public perception as its engineering soundness. I recall in "The Right Stuff," the movie on the early U.S. space program, a confrontation between the Mercury astronauts and the immigrant German designers over whether their rocket would be topped by a "capsule" or a "spacecraft" and the man in it would be an occupant or a "astronaut-pilot." The designers could build a craft to launch, fly and land completely automatically, and the astronauts knew this. But as the argument peaks, with a gaggle of reporters and press photographers in the background, one astronaut asks the Germans, "Do you know what makes this thing fly? Funding." He explained that the American public wants to see Buck Rogers go into space, then--jerking his thumb toward the press--concludes, "No Buck Rogers, no bucks." Fictional though it may be, that assessment is dead on. Sikorsky and its partners are starting off sinking their own money into X2, but for it to pay off, some customer--government or commercial--is going to have to put up bucks to fly it.