Machine Elements – Shaping the Future through Continuous Evolution

The well and the wheel—some of the
oldest inventions of mankind—were
themselves already dependent on machine
elements. Over the years, ropes
as the oldest class of machine elements
enabled numerous innovations such
as draw wells, sailing and later aircraft
construction. Machine elements have
always been at the center of numerous
innovations. More than ever, the further
development of classic machine
elements, such as gears and bearings,
enables innovative solutions for tomorrow’s
problems: a stocktaking.

Machine Elements Are
Everywhere

 In everyday speech, even technophobes
use machine elements in many
places to figuratively represent their
opinions. Sayings such as “Don’t reinvent
the wheel” or “Sand in the gears”
are ubiquitous, generally understood
and accepted. It is also impossible
to imagine everyday life without the
symbolism of machine elements. Just
imagine searching for the settings on a
smartphone without the stylized gear
wheel, the Mainz coat of arms without
the wheel, or the Rotary Club without
the machine elements in its trademark ). Many people are not aware of
the fact that many machine elements
originate from a development spanning
thousands of years and that today
it is impossible to imagine modern mechanical
and plant engineering products
without them.
This article, developed by the
Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für
Produktentwicklung (Scientific Society
for Product Development, WiGeP),
analyzes the evolution of two selected
classes of machine elements, formulates
a law to describe their development
in terms of Moore’s law and
extrapolates into the future. While transistors,
for whose architecture Moore’s
law was originally formulated (Ref.1),have now physically reached the highest
spatial density, the authors believe
that much is still achievable in machine
elements due to the possibilities
for synthesizing new system solutions.
Despite the very long history of
individual machine elements, they are
constantly being developed further and
digitalization offers machine elements
a high potential for innovation.