Compound planetary gears
"Compound planetary gear" is a general concept and it refers to any planetary gears involving one or more of the following three types of structures: meshed-planet (there are at least two or more planets in mesh with each other in each planet train), stepped-planet (there exists a shaft connection between two planets in each planet train), and multi-stage structures (the system contains two or more planet sets).
Some designs use "stepped-planet" which have two differently-sized gears on either end of a common shaft. The small end engages the sun, while the large end engages the ring gear. This may be necessary to achieve smaller step changes in gear ratio when the overall package size is limited. Compound planets have "timing marks" (or "relative gear mesh phase" in technical term). The assembly conditions of compound planetary gears are more restrictive than simple planetary gears, and they must be assembled in the correct initial orientation relative to each other, or their teeth will not simultaneously engage the sun and ring gear at opposite ends of the planet, leading to very rough running and short life. In 2015, a traction based variant of the "stepped-planet" design was developed by Jack F. Schorsch of the Delft University of Technology, which relies on compression of the stepped planet elements to achieve torque transmission. The use of traction elements eliminates the need to "timing marks" as well as the restrictive assembly conditions as typically found. Compound planetary gears can easily achieve larger transmission ratio with equal or smaller volume. For example, compound planets with teeth in a 2:1 ratio with a 50T ring gear would give the same effect as a 100T ring gear, but with half the actual diameter.
More planet and sun gear units can be placed in series in the same housing (where the output shaft of the first stage becomes the input shaft of the next stage) providing a larger (or smaller) gear ratio. This is the way most automatic transmissions work. In some cases multiple stages may even share the same ring gear which can be extended down the length of the transmission, or even be a structural part of the casing of smaller gearboxes.
During World War II, a special variation of epicyclic gearing was developed for portable radar gear, where a very high reduction ratio in a small package was needed. This had two outer ring gears, each half the thickness of the other gears. One of these two ring gears was held fixed and had one tooth fewer than did the other. Therefore, several turns of the "sun" gear made the "planet" gears complete a single revolution, which in turn made the rotating ring gear rotate by a single tooth like a Cycloidal drive.
