It's strange that even with all the advances in technology, the gear systems used all over the world still use mechanical toothed gears. Thinking along these lines, four students from Mangalore Institute of Technology and Engineering (MITE) have developed a frictionless gear transmission system using polymagnets.

The team, called AlphaGears, won the platinum prize of Rs 10 lakh for their project at KPIT Sparkle 2017 — an annual national design, development and innovation contest held at Pune.

The system is also the final year project for the four final year Mechanical Engineering students — Sharafath Shahsu V P, Mohammed Asif Abdullah, Sayuj Vijayanti and Nandu J Krishnan. The team has applied for a patent for the same and intend to begin working to make the product fit for practical use. 

They aced it: Mangalore Institute of Technology and Engineering at KPIT Sparkle 2017
 

The advantages of their system is mainly due to the use of polymagnets, which can be programmed to have different functions apart from the conventional magnets. Such gears provide contact-less torque transmission and inherent overload protection. In addition, they eliminate wear and suppress vibrations which in turn eliminate the costs associated with cooling, lubrication and maintenance. Because of the material and magnetic pixels used to make polymagnets, they are five times stronger than conventional magnets and lose their strength only by 1% over a period of 10 years. This gives the system a hardly believable life cycle of 100 years.

The team's guide Saviraj A S, the Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering department, termed the project "an innovative idea as the last 3-4 decades hadn't seen any revolutionary changes in gear transmission