Timaru inventor’s gearing system excites interest

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 3

Timaru inventor’s gearing system excites interest

PA Timaru [ I An international engineer-! ling company is negotiatingj manufacturing rights for a new gearing system invented: jby a Timaru man, Mr Robert 'Davidson jun. The English-based comipany is believed to have: 'spent $500,000 researching’ the invention. Mr Davidson, who reIturned to Timaru yesterday after three weeks with the company, said the research had authenticated his find-1 ings. The gearing movement is believed to be original and rates with the wheel, the screw, and the ratchet. While reluctant to discuss the value of the manufacturing rights being negotiated, Mr Davidson said that it might be worth several million dollars. The new system will have applications in a wide range of industries — from watchmaking to running destroyers. The overseas company, which Mr Davidson does not want named at this stage, is concentrating on the 50 h.p. to 500 h.p. range of industrial transmissions.

Mr Davidson made his discovery four years ago, and since then has worked in Timaru, researching the new system. The idea came to him when he watched a coin spinning on a bar in a hotel. “If you flip a coin on a table, and stop the coin rotating — the table would have to turn instead,” Mr Davidson said. It took him 16 pages of foolscap to describe his invention when he applied for patent rights. He has named it Theta, a Greek letter used in mathematics. The new system has only three parts — two of which are moving — compared with the minimum of six in conventional transmissions. Its major advantages are its simplicity, small size, and that it can be mass-pro-duced. The system can be driven at high speed with a low noise level and high efficiency. One of its most promising uses is in gas turbines. One of the spin-offs of the invention has been a constant velocity universal joint — something not yet achieved by any other

■ mechanical system. I Experts with the British company were “shocked” Iwhen they learned that Mr (Davidson had had no advanced mathematical trainling. He was educated at King Edward (now Dunedin) (Technical College and was (given extra mathematics work only as a punishment. His wife, who accom-! panied him to Britain, was less modest than Mr David- ( son when asked how the experts had reacted to his dis-! covery. “They called him a Igenius,” she said. Mr Davidson said he would continue to research different applications of the system, but there will be a lot of routine work to do. A honey-uncapping machine, his own invention, which uses his gearing system, is attracting increasing export sales, and he says it is almost a full-time job making the new gearboxes for local industry alone. I i Mr Davidson said he [ i would like to negotiate! (world-wide manufacturing i : rights for the Theta system, I i but will retain the worldiwide patent.