The Shape of Things to Come

I believe in some ways I was a normal kid growing up - perhaps in other ways, not so much.  One of the “normal” things that was more or less universal to kids was an attraction to cool looking sports cars.  As a young teenage male; cars were something you could relate to with your buddies even if they had no clue what an odd time signature was on a Kansas record or what Rush was singing about on their 2112 album.

My interest in cars, however, was almost exclusively aesthetic in nature.  I was not a gearhead and with my buddies who were, when confronted in discussions with topics such as carburetor barrels, limited slip differentials, gear ratios, etc. my look of perplexing would mirror their look back to me when I was rambling on about Rush 2112.

There was one particular car model that I thought was cool mostly because of the cool TV commercial they had for it.  It was the Triumph TR7.  The commercial’s tagline was “The Shape of Things to Come”.  The car had a triangular shaped body with the hood and windshield forming the hypotenuse of an automotive right triangle.  The visuals in the commercial showed the obligatory fast driving around curvy roads and the passing of other cars on a busy city street.  The end of each of these shots was the TR7 being pulled into a triangular shaped garage.  There was an American Indian driving up to his Teepee that had an animal skin tarped triangular roofed carport.  There was an eskimo driving up to his igloo with a triangular roofed snow block garage.  There was what I supposed was a member of the British gentry driving up to his English Tudor themed estate with a similarly appointed Tudor style garage with a triangular roof.  I always thought how cool it would be to have a triangular shaped garage to fit my cool triangular shaped TR7.
 

OK.  Now that I have reached the 300+ word count in this column, my faithful gentle readers are wondering what I am getting to.  Well it is perhaps nothing as cool as sports cars nor not as obtuse as a triangular geometry discussion; but nonetheless on the topic of the shape of things to come.

Because of the popularity of our Pulseroller Pulse Gear Drive (PGD); our production facilities have been looking for ways to increase our capacity while preserving our high standards of quality.  One of the ways is to automate the assembly process.  We already have implemented such automation for our motor drive units that are part of our motor rollers.  This has resulted in fewer rejections and rework (i.e. things our customers would never see), increased our capacity, and improved our lead times.

The rub is that the current square-ish housing with chamfered corners on our PGD has proven difficult for assembly automation.  Well, our astute engineers in Japan have come up with a solution that preserves the current existing PGD dimensions and mounting footprint while providing a new housing shape that can support an automated assembly process.
 

As you can see from the above images, most of the housing is now cylindrical as opposed to the square with chamfered corners.  Also note that the new housing has the same internally threaded mounting hole footprint as the previous design.

As this is an “engineering” change that does not affect the PGD’s performance, overall size, or mounting footprint; there will be no part number change.  We will continue to deliver the square chamfered housing version until our current stock has been depleted.  Once this has happened, the new cylindrical design will be delivered in its place for the same part number.  Keep in mind that some of the gear ratios will change sooner than others.

So, if you have an upcoming project or application that will need several PGD’s, please contact sales@pulseroller.com to inquire about exact deliveries and depending on the gear ratio you need, we can deliver the new design even if there are some old design units still in stock in order for you to avoid having a mix of the two designs at a given facility.

You can also contact support@pulseroller.com is you have any technical questions.  Because I happen to be the gatekeeper for technical documentation on our website; I know we will soon (or it has already happened depending on the publication date of this column) have the updated PGD drawings and 3D models on our website for you to download.

Back to the TR7, it was a good thing I never owned one of these because in my memory jogging Google research, I learned that the TR7 was not really that great of a sports car.  They were only made from 1974 to 1981.  So even though the new PGD does not in any way have a triangular shape or requires a long hypotenuse to mount; it is in the shape of things to come.