Almost diametrically opposed items of significance
You may remember my description of the removal of a mole from the back of my neck from an entry that I posted in December. Well, about a week ago, the pathology report came back: malignant melanoma.
Unfortunately, the doctor did not get all of the cancerous material when he removed the mole, so I am going to a surgeon on Tuesday to have the rest of it removed and thereby renew my Marcellus Wallace impression.
The good news about this is, such an excision should be completely curative and I should be cancer-free immediately following the surgery.
On a far better note, I doubt that any of you have heard of harmonic drive gearing. I hadn't heard of it either until last Wednesday, when the engineer who is supervising me asked me to do some research on it for one of the projects we are working on. Part of this project involves a gimbaled pointing system which will be utilizing harmonic drive gearing. He did not understand the gearing, and neither did his supervisor or the program manager, not to mention the EE's on the project. I went off to go look it up on the internet, and in about a half hour came back and explained it to him. Last Friday afternoon, the engineer with whom I am working was unable to attend the meeting, so I stood in for him and ended up with the chance to explain how the gearing works to the other guys on the project. This impressed the program manager enough that he has invited me to all future project meetings.
This type of gearing was invented in 1955 and the basic design has remained the same since its invention with only incremental improvements. It is used whenever a huge gear ratio is desired in a small space with minimal weight, such as industrial, medical, and other robots, positioning systems, etc. After the meeting last Friday, I was visualizing how the gearing works in my mind, thinking of more effective ways to explain it, when I came up with an idea for a change in the design. This change should be simple to implement and will result in several immediate improvements. I did my research, searching through all 795 patents in the US Patent and Trademark Office database regarding harmonic drive gearing, the 90-some regarding wave gearing (another name for it) and the 50-some regarding strain wave gearing (the original name) which have been awarded since 1976. My design was not among these. I also made a mock-up of my design in the Solidworks modeling program and ran a finite element analysis on it, confirming my belief that the non-operating stresses would only be slightly higher. I am now in the process of preparing a patent application, and we will see where it goes from there. Once I have finished the patent disclosure and it is in process, I can reveal a lot more about my design if any of you are interested.
Unfortunately, the doctor did not get all of the cancerous material when he removed the mole, so I am going to a surgeon on Tuesday to have the rest of it removed and thereby renew my Marcellus Wallace impression.
The good news about this is, such an excision should be completely curative and I should be cancer-free immediately following the surgery.
On a far better note, I doubt that any of you have heard of harmonic drive gearing. I hadn't heard of it either until last Wednesday, when the engineer who is supervising me asked me to do some research on it for one of the projects we are working on. Part of this project involves a gimbaled pointing system which will be utilizing harmonic drive gearing. He did not understand the gearing, and neither did his supervisor or the program manager, not to mention the EE's on the project. I went off to go look it up on the internet, and in about a half hour came back and explained it to him. Last Friday afternoon, the engineer with whom I am working was unable to attend the meeting, so I stood in for him and ended up with the chance to explain how the gearing works to the other guys on the project. This impressed the program manager enough that he has invited me to all future project meetings.
This type of gearing was invented in 1955 and the basic design has remained the same since its invention with only incremental improvements. It is used whenever a huge gear ratio is desired in a small space with minimal weight, such as industrial, medical, and other robots, positioning systems, etc. After the meeting last Friday, I was visualizing how the gearing works in my mind, thinking of more effective ways to explain it, when I came up with an idea for a change in the design. This change should be simple to implement and will result in several immediate improvements. I did my research, searching through all 795 patents in the US Patent and Trademark Office database regarding harmonic drive gearing, the 90-some regarding wave gearing (another name for it) and the 50-some regarding strain wave gearing (the original name) which have been awarded since 1976. My design was not among these. I also made a mock-up of my design in the Solidworks modeling program and ran a finite element analysis on it, confirming my belief that the non-operating stresses would only be slightly higher. I am now in the process of preparing a patent application, and we will see where it goes from there. Once I have finished the patent disclosure and it is in process, I can reveal a lot more about my design if any of you are interested.