#2056: RollMould
Today’s invention is a bicycle wheel made entirely of reinforced rubber.
Two shallow, conical moulds are lined with fibre matting, brought together and liquid rubber injected.
These are then spun about the axle, so that the rubber permeates the fibre and forms a circular section tyre together with two sides of an integral wheel.
This would allow wheels to be more resilient to impact such as when bouncing down a kerb. It would also be a much simpler manufacturing process than conventional spokes allow.
Lastly, the resulting wheels would offer the low-drag performance of ‘solid’ wheels.
Comment by rob tillaart
Hi,
A lot of your inventions (did not check them all) are about bicycles / wheels. Did you never wondered why a bicycle wheel is so big compared to the small patch that hit the road at any moment.
Imagine a wheel looking like not a circle but more like an ellipse
or abit like the chain
(excuses for the limitations of the ascii -set
() the vertical ellipse or a diagonal ellipse or the triangle tube or a tube folded in harmonica style, there can be so many wheels
Would special formed wheels give an advantage on certain terrains? Are the easier to replace?
Have fun!
Rob
Comment by Patrick
Hi Rob,
One of the problems is that the wheel would benefit from more contact area during acceleration but when rolling at high speed you want to reduce that area. Varying the tyre pressure systematically might be interesting.
Here is another one I thought up earlier !
http://iotd.patrickandrews.com/2007/11/08/hybride/
Cheers,
P
Comment by rob tillaart
Yes, #353 is a nice example. Changing the form of the wheel with speed can be done by adding “weights” in the wheel and using gravity and centrifugal forces.
High speed would make the wheel rounder (centrifugal force on weight)
Low speed would make the wheel flatter (gravity => weights drop)
No detailed design in mind yet