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.)
“The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)