Wearing your adapter on your sleeve

A new design of coupling can accommodate a variety of shaft sizes by making use of improved adapter sleeves

. The Smart-Lock from Gerwah of Germany depends on cylindrical sleeves that are adaptable to various shaft diameters. The sleeves have untreated, forged surfaces. Grip is achieved by doing up the bolts in a clamp that compresses the end of the hollow shaft in the coupling on to the sleeve and the solid shaft within it. “We have been searching for a solution that is indifferent to size tolerances, and can be adapted to various shaft and hollow shaft diameters,” says managing director Gerd Schuessler. The problem is exacerbated by wear and fretting corrosion reducing effective solid shaft diameter. After the adapters have been inserted into the hollow shafts, they guarantee an exact fit without free play. A special adapter sleeve has been developed for tolerance zone h7/h9. The same adapter sleeve can thus be used for several solid shaft diameters. In fact, all kinds of shafts with sizes from 25 to 65mm in diameters can quickly be accommodated with just eight different Smart-Lock sets. For countries that do not use metric measurements, the company offers adapter sleeves in inch measurements from local stocks