Mechanical advantage is a measure of the force amplification achieved by using a tool, mechanical device or machine system. Ideally, the device preserves the input power and simply trades off forces against movement to obtain a desired amplification in the output force. The model for this is the law of the lever. Machine components designed to manage forces and movement in this way are called mechanisms.
An ideal mechanism transmits power without adding to or subtracting from it. This means the ideal mechanism does not include a power source, and is frictionless and constructed from rigid bodies that do not deflect or wear. The performance of real systems is obtained from this ideal by using efficiency factors that take into account friction, deformation and wear.
Read more about Mechanical Advantage: Law of The Lever, Speed Ratio, Gear Trains, Chain and Belt Drives, Block and Tackle, Efficiency
Famous quotes containing the words mechanical and/or advantage:
“A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)