Power Transmission Projects
ANSI and ISO compliant designs across reducers, belt drives, and planetary gear sets — serving food processing, oil & gas, packaging, and robotics including robot 7th-axis applications. Toolchain: Alibre Design Expert, CalculiX FEA, OpenFOAM, and custom in-house load calculation templates. Delivered manufacturing-ready in native Alibre, Inventor, and Fusion 360 formats, neutral 3D formats, and 2D drawing formats including DWG, DXF, and SVG.
Single Stage Reducer
Single-stage helical gear reducer with splash lubrication. Designed as a fully parametric template — input gear data (tooth count, module, face width) and the geometry and load calculations update automatically, making every unit configurable to application-specific ratio and torque requirements without redesign overhead.
Floating preload spacers control bearing axial load without fixed retention, reducing part count and assembly complexity. Split bearing seats and identical input/output shafts further compress manufacturing and maintenance costs at scale.
The parametric reducer model has been downloaded over 3,800 times on GrabCAD.
Client
Ex Machina Engineering Internal project
Year
2015
3-Tier Kinematic Mechanism
3-DOF serial kinematic drive for an animatronic art installation. Three independent axes of motion, each driven by a dedicated servo mounted at 120° radial intervals to balance the load envelope and minimize interference with the sculpture cavities.
The first axis is fixed to ground. Each subsequent stage mounts on a hub driven by the previous stage's output gear — creating a cascading kinematic chain where every stage carries its own actuator plus all downstream mass. Torque requirements were sized accordingly across the chain.
The entire drivetrain is concealed within the internal cavities of the sculpture tiers, with no external mechanical elements.
Client
Matthew Wadell
Year
2019