The balls (5) are actuated by a circular cam to lift them up and back down into a fixed tooth disc (4). The second tooth disc (3) accepts the balls, but has a different number of teeth.

In contrast to contemporary gear drives, torque and overload are generally transmitted by two gear teeth, the HOWIMAT precision recirculating ball drive system has a large number of balls engaged in the transmission.

Nearly 40% of the balls on the gear circumference are supporting the transmission. This generates a very high stiffness in torsion of the gear, which is irreversible. Therefore most applications don’t require any additional clamping system, assuming the proper sized unit is selected.

The entire gearing area is used for transmission even for small angular pitches and therefore the precision of the recirculating ball gear is ensured for an extended period of time, even if a load is concentrated in the same point for an extended period of time.

Our system provides a major benefit over conventional gear systems in production environments, as conventional systems will wear locally on certain position areas of the gear, something which is unavoidable. Using our system we completely remove this problem which has been the major flaw of existing systems since their inception.