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AssigneeHarmonic Drive Systems Inc.
InventorsShoichi Ishikawa, Yoshihide Kiyosawa
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A strain wave gearing comprising a circular spline, flexspline inside the circular spline, a wave generator for deforming the flexspline into, for example, an ellipsoid and a motor for rotating the wave generator to produce a relative rotation between the flexspline and the circular spline. The strain wave gearing is sometimes termed a harmonic drive transmission, and there is a type of gearing called flat-shaped strain wave gearing which is composed of two circular splines juxtaposed with each other, a flexspline in the circular splines having the same number of teeth as the first circular spline, a wave generator for deforming the flexspline into an ellipsoid and a motor for rotating the wave generator. In the flat-shaped gearing, each tooth of the flexspline is provided with a convex tooth face and a concave tooth flank. The tooth profile of the first circular spline is given by such a locus curve that the tooth face of the flexspline plots when the deformed configuration of the flexspline is rotated by the wave generator, and the tooth depth of the first circular spline is made equal to or larger than the working depth of the flexspline. Thus, the teeth of the flexspline engage with those of the first circular spline in the broad extent of the engagement region.
A strain wave gearing comprising a first rigid circular spline, a second rigid circular spline juxtaposed with the first spline along the axis of the first spline and having a different number of teeth from that of the first spline, a flexspline disposed coaxially inside both circular splines and having the same number of teeth as the first circular spline, and a wave generator having a non-circular configuration for deforming the flexspline into said non-circular configuration to bring the flexspline into partial engagement with the teeth of each of the first and second circular splines and for rotating the deformed configuration of the flexspline to produce a relative rotation between the first and second circular splines, and each of said second circular spline and the flexspline having a tooth profile formed based on a mapping curve which is a similar figure of a reduced scale of one-half applied to a first locus curve of the flexspline movement relative to the second circular spline in accordance with said configuration of the wave generator, with the similar figure being based on a reference point where the second circular spline and the flexspline are transferred from a contact state to a disengagement state from each other so as to provide each tooth of the flexspline with a convex tooth face and a concave tooth flank, wherein the tooth profile of the first circular spline other than a free space at the bottom of the tooth is given by a second locus curve that the tooth face of one tooth of the flexspline plots in one tooth space of the first circular spline when the deformed configuration of the flexspline is rotated by the wave generator, and the tooth depth of the first circular spline is made equal to or larger than the working depth of the flexspline.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.