I have been contemplating a new design for a levelwind. A levelwind is a device most commonly recognized in a fishing reel. it travels side to side, evenly distributing the line on the reel (takeup) as it spools on (figure A). We have many machines in my plant (wire & cable making plant) which do exactly the same thing but on a larger scale. This is more of a thought exercise than a real plan to reinvent the wheel; I do not actually plan to modify anything, just looking for ideas. So what I was thinking is that instead of all the mechanical wizardry to make the levelwind travel back and forth, stopping and reversing direction, to just replace it with a rotating disk (figure B). the disk would have a hole in it and the wire (or fishing line) would pass through the hole. as the disk travels around, the line would be brough outward to each side of the reel and back again. the problem with this is that the position of the hole on the rotating disk, if plotted out, would be a sine wave. As in a sine wave, its average position over time would mostly be to the outsides of the reel, resulting in a concave wire load on the reel (figure C). My idea is that if the speed of the rotating disk could be controlled by seperate equal sine wave 90degrees out of phase of the rotating hole, the wire load would be even. the rotating disk would slow as it passed the center of the reel, then speed up as it went to the side, then slow back down as it went past center again, and so on. I can't think of a (simple) mechanical way to rotate the disk at sinousidal variable speed though. The best I can come up with is an equally sized drive gear whose center shaft is off-center, but then the shaft of the drive gear would have to be on a movable arm and would just be wacky. any ideas?
Attachments
-
16.3 KB Views: 90