Saturday, November 17, 2007

Alfred H. Rzeppa

Alfred Hans Rzeppa was an engineer working at Ford Motor Company who invented a version of constant-velocity joint in 1926. He proposed an improved design in 1936.

It uses six balls, and an inner and outer race to provide almost constant velocity torque transfer regardless of the joint angle. The joint works something like a bevel gear with the balls bisecting the joint angle and functioning as the "teeth" to transmit torque. The description of the two versions of the Rzeppa joint can be found in the US patents 2,010,899 and 2,046,584.

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