From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Testing side shafts and gears, detailing issues with humming, knocking, and backlash.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 75\1\ scan0047 | |
| Date | 5th February 1913 guessed | |
| -4- in mind ever since, and although I now see that there are difficulties which I had not anticipated, yet I still think the idea is right. In taking up the question of side shafts I again checked the periodicity of the notes given out, with of course the same result. I thought I would overcome the difficulty of reproducing the setting of the gears by grinding them actually in the box, which was more possible than in the case of the axle. We used 3" shafts to connect the flywheels to the gears and supported the flywheels in separate bearings to relieve the box of as much strain as possible. The flywheels used were the extra heavy engine flywheels. I again used a brake but a very much lighter one. The first gears tried were our standard gears cut with Brown & Sharpe cutters and hardened in the usual way. These gears were originally bad for humming. After running in the rig the surface of the teeth appeared to be excellent, but when they were again tried without the flywheels they were still not at all good. The gears were run fairly fast and coarse emery used for grinding. The feature in the running in of these gears was the extraordinary amount of knocking which took place between the teeth; this was so violent that it would throw the flywheel forward and take up all the back-lash | ||