PLANETARY GEARBOXES

Planetary Gearboxes consists of three major components:

• Sun gear
• Planet gear
• Ring gear

The sun gear is meshed around with the planet gears, which in turn are meshed with ring gear. Planet gears are connected to each other by a carrier, which helps them to rotate around the sun gear

Advantages of Planetary system over helical gearbox:

• They are compact and take less space and are light weight, as the load is shared between the planet gears.
• The noise and vibration is reduced as the load is shared. This also increases efficiency
• Since the shafts are inline and concentric, bending moment is absent.
• The manufacturing of these components is relatively cheaper due to smaller size as compared to parallel axis gearboxes.

Disadvantages:

• The gear system is complex and needs precision manufacturing
• Teeth ratios are specific and assemble is according to them.
• Calculations of efficiency are a bit difficult.