Since Apollo 15 at the latest, rovers and probes for planetary exploration have relied on gears based on the Harmonic Drive® principle – from wheel drive to camera guidance.
40 years maintenance free in space, 30 years installed in an aircraft wing or under extreme temperatures down to -268 °C in special environments - these are examples of the reliability and quality of our products. New challenges such as special materials, extremely lightweight construction or dry lubrication are developed especially for your special environments in aerospace.
Since Apollo 15 at the latest, rovers and probes for planetary exploration have relied on gears based on the Harmonic Drive® principle – from wheel drive to camera guidance.
We know: Every application has its own requirements and needs an individual specification. We also know: It is difficult to assign the right component. That is why it is important to us to respond to your needs individually and with personal advice.
Whether passenger planes, spaceships or space probes – there is one thing that all flying objects have in common, whether they are in the air or in space. Their components are subject to enormous pressure and are nevertheless under great responsibility to perform. Such actuators must be capable of reliably fulfilling the demands placed on them. Besides positional accuracy and repeat precision, as well as high torque capacity and torsional rigidity, absolute priority is attached to the lightness and reliability of the components’ construction. The Harmonic Drive® principle enjoys a long tradition in aerospace applications. More than 50 years ago, the first Harmonic Drive® gears left our planet and contributed to the success of the first explorations of the moon as part of the Apollo missions.
The application spectrum of Harmonic Drive® actuators in aerospace is varied. While the CPL series and in-house developed, dry-lubricated Harmonic Drive® ZirconLine actuators are predestined for use in satellites, where they are employed among other things to control the orientation of the solar panels, special-purpose gears based on HFUC gearing technology are found in aviation applications, where they drive a wide range of safety-critical applications. Integrated as components in the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, Harmonic Drive® actuators have been involved in researching the uncharted expanses of the Red Planet; as wheel drives, they were among the first marathon finishers to reach our neighbouring planet.
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