Floating Shaft

Dear,

This is Engineer's forum!!!

May be you joined recently and want's to ask a basic's of engineering.

Answer to your question:

Why do you think car's front two wheels are connected to the engine?

Regards

Karan

Karan

Your answer is not only rude but is devoid of any engineering merit.

If I understand your question right, the motor is arranged between the wheels. The shaft extends on either side if the motor and drives wheels at the ends of the shaft.

Alternate to this, as per your suggestion, you may need two small motors, one for each wheel, right?

And you need to synchronize these motors as to prevent skewing up of the trolley. This could be a greater problem than managing/maintaining a long shaft.

As I see in my cranes (at least the larger ones, difficult to see but it is there as the OP said) The sketch is as below

And as I could see the space problem is not there (at least not that much from maintenance angle that long shaft was not required)

But as I guess (GUESS ) is that since the wheels are on the rails, there is high likely hood of misalignment between the motor and the wheel axle as it runs on the shock absorber and bearings over the not so well laid tracks, and the track joints. Where the motor is rigidly fixed on the transverse rails. (It is like the axles Vs drive - normally you do not prefer motor cycles to be directly coupled do you? you use chains to take care of the shock, vibration, misalignment).

Here due to the heavy load, smaller possible misalignment and also the cleanliness and space constraints, instead of chain drive, these drives are put where this misalignment is taken care of by the long shaft and the twin couplings- the resultant misalignment angle sin^-1 (δ/L) is small when L is large - this will not only help in isolating those vibration from motors but also reduce the stress on the couplings

Hi Sb,

You can not connect motor directly to wheel as wheel will run at very high speed, so there has to be gearbox to reduce the speed.

Suresh Sharma

Dear Professor,

I agree the answer is blunt but since he has seen a EOT Crane, and hopefully a qualified works man ,(you can visualise by the way he put his question) he is not supposed to ask such silly question.

Main reason for snapping is to avoid such kind of stupid questions in our forum ( it will save our quality time by browsing through and answering)

This site is for discussing and exploring bright engineering ideas and experts from professionals. Not for teaching the basics to students.

There are plenty of sites are there to teach them.

If you feel it is de voiding engineering merits, I cannot help it.

Regards

Karan

Dear Karan,

I have been with EOT crane with approx now 25 yrs+ but never even looked at the floating shaft part- of course always looked from below, not being into the maintenance of that stuff.

The concept here is, we, at the senior level prefer the youngsters to ask why- may be we know the answers or may be we don't, on that aspect we try to explain why- in the forum, we may get ourself corrected and then we know something new- or not corrected and that is the problem, then we don't know whether our guess is correct or not.

But it all starts with a question - why - and unless that is asked, we don't think. And that is at our age, we take things as they are and not bother to ask why or why not.

I appreciate your misgivings, but in the current context it looks to be misplaced.

well, hit me with new Engg ideas & news......I will be a grate friend-------KARAN

Mr Karan, could I suggest you learn sentence construction and spelling before criticising others.

Regards Tony

DEAR Mr. "Regards" Tony,

I know I am a "SHAKING" SPHERE not Shakespeare.

This forum is for 'Engineers' knowledge not for English literature.

And I am not criticising..but correcting somebody wasting our time.

My mother tongue is African but I am communicating in English. I think that is okay for me and all the Engineers who can understand what I am "technically" saying.

In our forum,if I am mentioning a NUT as SCREW, I will be considered as a "nut case" and you are allowed to "screw" me.

Please concentrate on technical matters not suggesting somebody to learn a language.

Karan

N.B: The great is typing mistake and regarding the sentence construction: this is the way we plead for technical knowledge in our generation.

The doubt is right and to be frank, only a crain designer can tell that aspect.

The telescopic or cardan shaft may be used for several purposes,

It may be easier for maintenance (ie if the motor and the wheel gear boxes are located such that the direct coupling is going to make the life difficult for the maintenance man in case of the failure of either and the subsequent dismantling)

The re-alignment is just a tiny bit easier since the angle extended is less.

It may be for better shock absorption capacity.

Sometimes these are provided to take care of thermal expansion

Just study the drive system and then the answer may be clearer.

Floating Shaft? is it universal joint?. If so, it is provided to take care of any misalignment between wheel and gear box output shaft, not motor shaft. Wheels are normally connected through gear box.

Suresh Sharma.