Elliptical Path

Original project made with Autodesk Inventor 2014. The animation and renderings were made using the Inventor Studio module.

Once again here is an application of Cardan (Girolamo Cardano, 1501 - 1574) principle which was explained in my former project Cork press

In my words, the principle is: „Given two circles, where one has a double radius then the other, when the small circle rotates slip less interior tangent to the great (grounded) circle, then a point (any point) on the small circle describes a diameter (straight line) of the great circle”.

Actually, the two toothed wheels in this project have their pitch circle diameters in a ratio of 1:2. A point on a diameter of the small wheel follows an elliptical path if it is reported to the big wheel. As you can see, after a full rotation the position of Ellipse Indicator is moved from 12 mm to 19 mm reported to the center of the small wheel, and the new ellipse path is changed.

The dimensions of the two ellipses are 84x36 mm the first one and 98x22 mm the other.

If you use Inventor, you have to download all the files in a single directory, then open the .iam file with Inventor 2014, 2015..., enter Environments/Inventor Studio and change all the settings you want for obtaining a new animation.

Enjoy!