Rolling Ring Drives in Winding and Spooling Applications

This article is a companion piece to the main article, Rolling Ring Drives in Linear Motion from the May 2007 issue of Power Transmission Engineering

As shown in Figure A, a rolling ring drive with a guide mounted on top may be used to "traverse" material back and forth onto a spool.

Figure A

The rolling ring shaft is driven using a simple belt and pulley setup. One motor drives both the spool shaft and the rolling ring drive shaft (Fig. B).

Figure B

Depending on the width of the material being spooled, the linear pitch of the rolling ring drive is set using a dial on the drive. Once set, the pitch remains constant, regardless of the rotational speed of the spool drive motor.

This means that as the spool fills up—and the rotational speed slows down—the linear motion of the rolling ring drive remains synchronized with the rotational movement of the spool, without requiring motion controllers or programming.

And since the rolling ring drive reverses automatically—without requiring the spool drive to be reversed—no complex control system is needed.