Gear Box Types | Explanation

What is Gear Box?

Every two or four-wheeler driver understand the importance of shifting gears. But do you know how the gearbox works? What mechanism works in gearbox when we shift gears. Some of the cars don’t have clutch pads WHY? How automatic transmission works? Read the below information about the gear box, its parts and how it works?

The gearbox is a transmission device used between engine’s output shaft and final drive to transfer power and torque to the wheels. There are set of gears in the gearbox like a spur, helical, bevel, worm and epicycle. All this depend on the which gearbox is used and arranged in order to provide required gear and speed ratios to the final drive of the vehicle. The gearbox is coming with a 5-speed transmission with reverse and an automatic transmission.

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Why Gear Box is important?

The gearbox is used to provide the different need for torque and speed as it changes with road conditions. To encounter this problem there is require a device or component which provide different speed or gear ratios to keep the vehicle moving.

• When the car starts, the torque provide by engine output shaft is not enough to move the vehicle, and with the gearbox, this problem can be solved as it provides high torque to move the vehicle.
• In the hill area the vehicle required a wide range of high torque, and to provide this the gearbox is required to drive vehicle on hill area.
• In the high-speed vehicle, the torque is not so effective and for this the gearbox provide the high-speed low torque ratio to maintain the high speed.
• For the race car, the continuous change in high torque to high speed and as there are curvy track and the race car should equip with a suitable gearbox for shifting gear smooth and easy.

Countries which have traffic problems, drivers have to the continuous change of gears manually and it requires the pressing the clutch pedal which is a headache for a driver. The automatic transmission helps in the traffic condition.

Important parts of Gear Box

Main Shaft

This is used as an output shaft in gearbox. This shaft is kept parallel to the layshaft in front of the clutch shaft or engine output shaft. Changing of gear is occur and with that shaft is usually connected to gear lever.

Clutch Shaft

This carries the engine output to the gearbox. Engaging and disengaging of the engine output occurs with the help of clutch.

Layshaft or Counter Shaft

With the shaft the output of the engine is transferred to the main shaft and by continuous meshing of gear on the layshaft to the gear on the clutch shaft.

Gears

Gears are the connecting circles with teeth which rotates and meshes with another gear on the different shaft to transmit the circular motion between 2 different shafts. These gears may spur gear, helical gear, bevel gear and worm gear.

Synchromesh Devices

These are the special devices used in the modern gearbox and it makes the shifting of gears smooth by bringing the speed of main-shaft, lay-shaft and clutch-shaft at the same, they don’t have to slide over the shaft for shifting the gear.

Dog Clutches

These are used in old gearbox like constant mesh gearbox for avoiding the sliding of gear over the shaft for meshing or shifting. They are slide over the shaft to shift a gear.

Gear Lever

This is used by the driver to change or shift the gear. The movement of the lever is designed with a particular design.

Note that in the automatic gearbox, there is epicyclic gear train is used so which means there is no dog clutches or synchromesh devices. And for hydraulic coupling or torque converter there totally different parts are used like stator, impeller, high compressed fluid. The turbine provides different speed and torque. There are no gears used.

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Different types of Gearbox

There are mainly 2 types of transmissions used these days. Which are

1. Manual Transmission
2. Automatic Transmission

1. Manual Transmission

Manual transmission is widely used gearbox in most of the vehicle as it has a low cost. In this type of gearbox, there are limited gear or speed ratios like 6-speed and 1-reverse. The shifting of gears is manual and it is performed by the driver by pushing or pulling the lever. The clutch is used in manual transmission.

Types of Gear Box in Manual Transmission

👉 Sliding Mesh Gearbox

This is the oldest type of gearbox used. In this gearbox the gears of the main shaft and layshaft are not in mesh. They are independent and only a single gear is continuous mesh with the gear on a clutch shaft that rotates the lay-shaft and the meshing gears with appropriate gear on layshaft occurs and due to that the left or right siding of gears of main shaft.

Note that the sliding mesh requires a special technique for shifting of gears and it is known as double-de-clutching.

👉 Constant Mesh Gear Box

This is the modified version of the gearbox which solves the limitation of sliding mesh gearbox. As the name suggests all the gears of the lay-shaft, main-shaft and clutch shaft are in constant mesh with each other and shifting of gear is obtained by sliding of dog clutches over the splined main shaft to get high speed and torque.

This gearbox solves the problem of double-se-clutching but the shifting of gear is noisy and not smooth as the speed of layshaft, main-shaft and clutch shaft timing is not same.

👉 Synchromesh Gear Box

This is the latest types of gearbox which provide smooth and special devices like synchromesh devices which helps the devices to get a speed of all shafts to the same before the meshing of appropriate gears and it causes less wear and tear to gears.

Automatic Transmission

The automatic transmission is used in high-end cars as it is costly. With this type of gearbox, the infinite gear ratios can obtain by pressing the accelerator. In this type of gearbox, the driver just has to select the drive mode like forward or reverse, park, neutral, drive and sport it requires gear ratios with timing of meshing and it is obtained automatically. In the automatic gearbox, there is no requirement of the clutch pedal. So, a car with automatic transmission comes with only 2 pedals.

Types of automatic transmission are

👉 Epicyclic Gearbox

There is a sun and planetary gears with an annular ring and carrier are used in types of gearbox. The clutch shaft is connected to the sun gear and it is constant mesh with numbers of a planetary gear and it rotates freely on their axis and is in constant mesh with ring gear with teeth at the inner side, rotation of the planet gears is carried by the carrier and it is connected to the main shaft.

This type of transmission has the shifting gear or different gear ratios and it is obtained by making one of the gears to the sun gear. The planetary and ring gears are constant by mean of breaking band and it is operated by the accelerator pedal.

👉 Hydraulic Torque Converter

In this type of automatic gearbox, the fluid coupling is used. There is also an impeller, a turbine, a highly compressed fluid and a stator is used to get different speed or gear ratios which are controlled by the accelerator pedal. The impeller of a torque converter is connected to the engine shaft and the turbine is connected to the output shaft and stator is placed between these two direct the flow of the fluid.

 Where are they used?

For example, the 5-speed 1-reverse synchromesh gearbox manual transmission is used in Maruti Suzuki Swift. The Honda i-Vtech comes with epicyclic type automatic gearbox. The Audi A6 has a hydraulic type automatic gearbox.

This is the information about Gear Box and its types.

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