Hi all
I hope some clever people can help me...
In a traditional worm drive, the worm (the driver) rotates about its own axis (which is fixed in place). This causes the worm gear (the driven) to rotate about its axis. Is it possible to fix the worm gear and allow the worm axis to rotate about the worm gear? In other words, if you lifted a worm drive up, held it by its worm gear and turned the worm motor on... would the worm "climb" around the circumference of the worm gear? Obviously, the worm would have to be attached to some sort of arm that connected to the worm gear axis.
On a similar note...
A rack and pinion is usually setup in two ways:
1) The pinion rotates and causes the rack to move linearly.
2) The rack moves linearly to rotate the pinion.
However, if the pinion is fixed, would a linear movement of the rack cause the lengthwise axis of the rack to rotate about the pinion (assuming it had a design that allowed it to do so)?
I've attached an image that hopefully explains these setups. Are they possible or am I making a fundamental error here? Your help is appreciated.