
BUILDING WITH GEARS 57
results in a ratio of 3:1. The next pair of gears is also an
8t gear driving a 24t gear, which means it also results in a
gear ratio of 3:1.
NOTE When calculating the gear ratio for compound
gear trains, we ignore all idler gears that do not share
an axle.
3. Multiply the gear ratios like fractions.
In this case,
multiplying 3:1 and 3:1 produces a gear ratio of 9:1.
4. Simplify the ratio to its lowest terms. We don’t need
to simplify the gear ratio in this example because it’s
already in lowest terms.
For every nine rotations of the driver gear, the driven
gear rotates once; the speed decreases by a factor of nine,
but t ...