In piston engine engineering, a balance shaft is an eccentric weighted shaft which offsets vibrations in engine designs that are not inherently balanced (for example, most four-cylinder engines). They were first invented and patented by British engineer Frederick Lanchester in 1904.
Read more about Balance Shaft: Overview, Four-cylinder Applications, Six-cylinder Applications, Production Implementations
Famous quotes containing the words balance and/or shaft:
“The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate, so that being thrown into the balance it may prevent either scale from preponderating.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)