Library › Mechanisms › Belt and friction drives ·
Grooved (wedge) friction gearing, 30 : 60
Why are friction wheels grooved? · Hardware · basis: Xem Studio design following Brown No. 45 (1868)
Also called: grooved friction wheel, wedge friction drive, v groove friction gearing, engranaje de fricción ranurado, Keilreibradgetriebe
Exact dimensions. True size, with no printing tolerance added.
- sizes
- 4 in table
Notes
- Ridges on one wheel wedge into matching V-grooves on the other: pressed together with force F, the normal force on the flanks is F / sin(α/2), so with 67.38° grooves the grip is about 1.8 times that of plain wheels at the same pressure.
- Ratio by pitch diameters, 60/30 = 2 : 1, centres 45 mm; the two profiles are exact complements on the line of centres (touching flanks, no overlap).
- Brown's No. 45 (friction gearing with grooves, shown in section).
- Parts (each has its own page): grooved-friction-wheel-30, grooved-friction-wheel-60.
- Brown's movement No. 45 (1868) shows it; this model is a Xem Studio design following his figure, every part at true size.
Grooved (wedge) friction gearing, 30 : 60 size chart
| parameter | value |
|---|---|
| wheels | pitch Ø30 and Ø60 × 16 |
| grooves | 4 mm pitch, 67.38° |
| centres | 45 mm |
| grip gain | ≈ 1.8× |
Where the files are
Other publishers' files are linked, not hosted. "verify" = check the license at the link before commercial use.
| Henry T. Brown (1868, public domain) | Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements — scan on archive.org | web | Publisher's page; dimensions are facts |
| 507movements.com | Brown's movement No. 45: figure, his text and an animation | web | Publisher's page; dimensions are facts |
Free files
★ Free files 1 parts. Generated by Xem Studio from the standard; threads are plain cylinders at major diameter. CC BY 4.0. index.json
| grooved-friction-wheels-mechanism-assembly | Assembled mechanism, all parts placed at one pose (STEP keeps each part separate) | STEP · STL |
https://xemstudio.com/mcp to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client (free, no account, one minute) and it can look up exact sizes, mating fits and free STEP/STL from every chat.Plain text: sheet.txt · JSON: /api/geometry?object=grooved-friction-wheels-mechanism

Fits with
Questions
Why are friction wheels grooved?
Ridges on one wheel wedge into matching V-grooves on the other: pressed together with force F, the normal force on the flanks is F / sin(α/2), so with 67.38° grooves the grip is about 1.8 times that of plain wheels at the same pressure.

