Bonfiglioli planetary gears drive Zoetrope device

Bonfiglioli planetary gears have been selected to drive a device that produces the illusion of motion from slightly varying static pictures when rotated and viewed through slits in a cylinder.

Sony Electronics chose to promote its latest Bravia televisions with the use of a Zoetrope device.

The 10m-wide, 3m-tall machine - named the Bravia-drome - was filmed for a television commercial in the town square of Venaria, northern Italy, to promote the Motionflow 200Hz technology.

The Bravia-drome contains 64 images of Kaka, a footballer, performing a trick with a football, to produce just more than 2.5 seconds of animation.

The 3,000kg rotating part of the machine is driven by a slew ring and pinion from an 11kW eddy current speed variator and Bonfiglioli planetary gearbox, supplied by distribution partner Amir Power Transmissions (APT).

This allowed the Zoetrope to increase in speed and rotate at a periphery speed of up to 50km/h, demonstrating that as the machine speed increased, the motion smoothness improved.

An eddy current variator was chosen to produce 300 per cent starting torques and to overcome the potential problems of decelerating the machine and not having to use braking resistors to store the generated energy.

The Bonfiglioli planetary gearbox offers compactness, a large reduction ratio, high shock overload and high radial output shaft load.

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