Adjustable-Angle Gear Pair for Multi-Angle Roller Shades
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional gears are limited to fixed gearing intersection angles, making them unsuitable for applications requiring variable angles, such as motorized roller shades arranged at different angles, where a single motor needs to drive multiple shades efficiently without gaps for light entry.
Innovation Solution
The development of gears with a circular base and varying cross-sectional gear teeth profiles, allowing for rotation about imaginary axes tangential to a circle encompassing the inner region, enabling meshing at a range of angles through pivots arranged relative to each gear, ensuring compatibility across varying angles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional spur gears with fixed gear angles are used, then the gear structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but the gears cannot mesh at variable angles, limiting adaptability to different roller shade arrangements
Solution Approach 1:
The gear is designed with a variable geometry where the tooth profile changes along the radial direction. The cross-sectional profile of the tooth varies from the center to the outer edge, allowing the gear to adapt to different meshing angles dynamically. This is achieved by defining the tooth profile through a series of rotated cross-sections around the gear center, creating a three-dimensional variable geometry that accommodates angular variations.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the geometric parameters of the gear tooth profile along its radial extent. By varying the cross-sectional profile shape and orientation from the center to the outer region, the gear can maintain proper meshing engagement across a range of intersection angles. The profile parameters are specifically designed to accommodate angular deviations while maintaining functional gear engagement.
2Adaptability or versatility
If semi-spherical gears are used to provide variable gearing intersection angle, then the gear can mesh at any angle, but the gear size increases and the ends of roller shades cannot be placed sufficiently close to each other
Solution Approach 1:
The invention incorporates curved surface elements in the gear tooth profile, using a combination of cylindrical and spherical geometric features. The variable cross-sectional profile includes curved surfaces that allow angular adaptation without requiring a fully spherical gear geometry. This selective application of curvature provides angle variability while maintaining a more compact form factor than complete semi-spherical gears.
3Productivity
If a single motor drives multiple roller shades through meshing gears, then cost is reduced and efficiency improves, but the gears must be precisely positioned at specific angles, requiring high manufacturing precision
Solution Approach 1:
The gear design incorporates variable geometric parameters that compensate for angular deviations. By designing the tooth profile to vary cross-sectionally, the gear can maintain proper engagement even when there are minor deviations from the ideal meshing angle. This reduces the stringency of manufacturing precision requirements while still enabling effective power transmission from a single motor to multiple roller shades.
Data Source
AI summary
A window shade system includes a first bracket coupled to a first pivot and rotatable at least within a first range of angles, a second bracket coupled to a second pivot and rotatable at least within a second range of angles, and first and second gears that each include a circular base rotatable about a central axis. Gear teeth are arranged in a same row and extend outward from the outer region and are evenly spaced from each other along the outer region of the gears. The first and second pivots are arranged relative to each other and relative to the central axes of the first and second gears, respectively, such that for any angle within the first range of angles, the gear tooth of the first gear meshes with the gear tooth of the second gear at a corresponding angle within the second range of angles.