Grave stone
Grave stone of Lorenz Branren in Süderende, Föhr, Gernany
When Lorenz Konrad Braren was born in 1886, the son of an elementary school teacher on the North Friesian island of Föhr, no-one could have suspected that one day he would invent something that would attract attention all over the world. In the late 1920s, after several jobs in factories in the USA and Germany, the technology-mad engineer, who had in the meantime been taken on as the Head Designer at Friedrich Deckel in Munich, made use of his extensive experience to look into a completely new idea. The COMPUR shutter for cameras manufactured by Deckel inspired Lorenz Braren to come up with the idea for an innovative cycloid gearbox. In 1930 he registered the patent for a machine which was able to manufacture the cam discs for this gearbox with a high degree of precision. In so doing he created the basis for a completely new gearbox technology. The following year the inventor founded his own firm in Munich and the first Cyclo gearboxes were mass-produced. After a visit to the Leipzig trade fair in 1932, the first co-operation came about with the company that is today Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd., who acquired a licence to build the Cyclo gearbox in Japan. Over 14 million examples of the Cyclo gearbox, which is now in its eight generation, have been supplied worldwide.
A look at how it works soon makes clear why this ingenious invention has been so successful. The name "CYCLO" - the unusual product name goes back to a employee vote -- stands for eccentric gearbox, whose cam outer profile describes a cycloidal curved line. When the eccentric rotates, it rolls the cam discs along the inner circumference of the fixed ring gear. While the cam discs move clockwise within the ring gear, at the same time they rotate anti-clockwise around their own axis. As they do so, the cycloidal teeth engage one after the other in the gaps between the rollers and so create a reverse rotation with reduced speed. The speed reducing gear ratio is determined by the number of cycloidal teeth on a disc. The reduced rotation is transmitted onto the output shaft via drive pins which engage in the holes of the cam discs. And as roller gears are placed both on the drive pins of the output shaft and on the drive pins of the ring gear, the transmission of torque can be a smoothly moving process. Cyclo gearboxes thus bring a whole lot of advantages with them: the operating principle leads to highly efficient, compact and easy to assemble gear combinations, which are characterised by high ratios, high shock load capacity, low inertia and low noise. With motor outputs from 0.12 to 55 kW and their high levels of precision, the gearboxes are suitable to a very wide variety of uses: they are to be found in printing presses, machine tools, robots, centrifuges, textile machines and in materials-handling technology, to name just a few of the applications.
The founder of the company died in 1953 at the age of 67. In 1974 the ten-year long co-operation led into Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd.'s involvement in Cyclo Getriebebau Lorenz Braren GmbH. Since 1993 the original Markt Indersdorf enterprise has been a 100% subsidiary of this Japanese engineering company and as Sumitomo (SHI) Cyclo Drive Germany GmbH continues to successfully translate Lorenz Konrad Braren's idea into reality. Today the Markt Indersdorf site is the European head office, from which a total of five European branch offices and sales offices in almost all the countries in Europe are coordinated. The parent company Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. is continually expanding its commitment in the area of Cyclo gear technology and besides development, engineering and distribution will continue to invest in the production area in Europe.
Grave stone
Grave stone of Lorenz Branren in Süderende, Föhr, Gernany
When Lorenz Konrad Braren was born in 1886, the son of an elementary school teacher on the North Friesian island of Föhr, no-one could have suspected that one day he would invent something that would attract attention all over the world. In the late 1920s, after several jobs in factories in the USA and Germany, the technology-mad engineer, who had in the meantime been taken on as the Head Designer at Friedrich Deckel in Munich, made use of his extensive experience to look into a completely new idea. The COMPUR shutter for cameras manufactured by Deckel inspired Lorenz Braren to come up with the idea for an innovative cycloid gearbox. In 1930 he registered the patent for a machine which was able to manufacture the cam discs for this gearbox with a high degree of precision. In so doing he created the basis for a completely new gearbox technology. The following year the inventor founded his own firm in Munich and the first Cyclo gearboxes were mass-produced. After a visit to the Leipzig trade fair in 1932, the first co-operation came about with the company that is today Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd., who acquired a licence to build the Cyclo gearbox in Japan. Over 14 million examples of the Cyclo gearbox, which is now in its eight generation, have been supplied worldwide.
A look at how it works soon makes clear why this ingenious invention has been so successful. The name "CYCLO" - the unusual product name goes back to a employee vote -- stands for eccentric gearbox, whose cam outer profile describes a cycloidal curved line. When the eccentric rotates, it rolls the cam discs along the inner circumference of the fixed ring gear. While the cam discs move clockwise within the ring gear, at the same time they rotate anti-clockwise around their own axis. As they do so, the cycloidal teeth engage one after the other in the gaps between the rollers and so create a reverse rotation with reduced speed. The speed reducing gear ratio is determined by the number of cycloidal teeth on a disc. The reduced rotation is transmitted onto the output shaft via drive pins which engage in the holes of the cam discs. And as roller gears are placed both on the drive pins of the output shaft and on the drive pins of the ring gear, the transmission of torque can be a smoothly moving process. Cyclo gearboxes thus bring a whole lot of advantages with them: the operating principle leads to highly efficient, compact and easy to assemble gear combinations, which are characterised by high ratios, high shock load capacity, low inertia and low noise. With motor outputs from 0.12 to 55 kW and their high levels of precision, the gearboxes are suitable to a very wide variety of uses: they are to be found in printing presses, machine tools, robots, centrifuges, textile machines and in materials-handling technology, to name just a few of the applications.
The founder of the company died in 1953 at the age of 67. In 1974 the ten-year long co-operation led into Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd.'s involvement in Cyclo Getriebebau Lorenz Braren GmbH. Since 1993 the original Markt Indersdorf enterprise has been a 100% subsidiary of this Japanese engineering company and as Sumitomo (SHI) Cyclo Drive Germany GmbH continues to successfully translate Lorenz Konrad Braren's idea into reality. Today the Markt Indersdorf site is the European head office, from which a total of five European branch offices and sales offices in almost all the countries in Europe are coordinated. The parent company Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd. is continually expanding its commitment in the area of Cyclo gear technology and besides development, engineering and distribution will continue to invest in the production area in Europe.