21Geo

21Geo

now rolling as Roll

Green Technology

We roll.

Nearly everything that spins pays a tax: parts sliding on parts. Sliding is lost energy and wear. The one machine element that escapes it — the rolling bearing — offers only two motions: rotation and a straight line. Roll extends rolling to nearly any motion: a pin rolling between precisely shaped raceways, guided by a tongue-and-groove retainer. Two US patents granted, one pending.

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Rolling Interfaces

The contact regime of a bearing, put to work

Tell us the motion you want — a speed reduction, a particular path — and we compute the pair of raceway shapes that produce that motion through pure rolling. Power crosses the rolling contact itself; the retainer guides the pin and carries no load. Every contact you see in these animations is rolling.

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A rolling interface generated from a specified motion profile — the pin rolls; nothing slides.

Any Motion

Every machine ever built is assembled from the same short list of parts — gears, bearings, shafts, linkages, sliders, pulleys — all more than five hundred years old. Where they fall short, no amount of engineering talent has been able to force one to do what it can't. A rolling interface is a new part in that box: nearly any specified motion, held through rolling contact.

Speed Reducers for Robotics

Our first product line. The target is stated in units every mechanical engineer owns: the efficiency of a bearing with the function of a gearbox. The ratio is set by the difference in pin count between the front and back sets of a single unit — designs from 10:1 to 253:1 have been simulated, with no stacked meshes to pay for.

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A 105:1 speed reducer — front and back pin sets in one unit; the pins roll between shaped raceways.

Precise Cycles

For 150 years, engineers have known the crank-and-piston cannot trace the motion an efficient thermodynamic cycle actually wants. A rolling interface can be shaped to deliver the piston height you specify at every shaft angle — so the cycle, not the crank, defines the geometry. The results below are design studies: modeled, not yet measured.

The cycle defines the geometry


Case Studies

Contact

Sunnyvale, CA, USA
info@roll-labs.com
(650) 323-9551