> I have always wondered why there are so many and therefore such shallow
> splines on a whire wheel. The fact that they wear out so quickly seems
> to be an indication of a major design flaw at least in terms of
> durability.
IMO they wear out quickly because they are not properly maintained, the
design flaw is only that they require some care in maintenance and
tightening. If the knockoff is kept properly tightened (which means that
the splines do not work back and forth between each acceleration/braking
cycle), and the splines are kept properly coated with grease or antiseize so
they don't rust, they will last a very long time. The 'wear' is caused when
the splines are dry and the knockoff isn't tight enough : each time the car
is parked the exposed face of the splines forms surface rust, which gets
knocked off the next time the car is driven. The cycle repeats until the
splines are eroded away.
> Why would more splines mean more strength? Seems to me that 2 or 4
> splines with equidistant peaks and valleys on a wire wheel would be
> stronger than 1000 Billion splines of the same or similar design on the
> same wire wheel. A 1000 Billion splines sounds a lot like a bearing to me.
The little splines spread the forces over a larger area, because the steel
in the center of the bigger splines contributes little in the way of
strength. Best example I can think of is tubing vs solid rod; where the
tubing resists bending almost as well as the solid rod.
"1000 Billion splines" would be a press-fit (where the molecules are the
splines), very strong but difficult to disassemble. Of course, with any
type of spline, the inner splines must overlap with the outer splines. If
they don't overlap, no force can be transmitted and you have a bearing ...
> A programmer not an engineer....
You mean you don't engineer your software ? Tsk, tsk.
Randall Young
Senior Software Engineer
NavCom Technologies, Inc
A John Deere Company
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