Rope drive Rope drive A rope drive is a form of belt drive, used for mechanical power transmission. Rope drives use a number of circular section ropes, rather than a single flat or vee belt. The first multiple rope drive was a 9 rope drive of 200 bhp produced by Combe Barbour for their Falls Foundry, Belfast, in 1863. James Combe experimented first with circular ropes laid from leather strips, then from manila hemp. The idea of using rope drives had arisen from his earlier, 1856, experiments in using a rope drive together with an expanding vee pulley, as part of a
Block and tackle output force), formula_5 is the ideal mechanical advantage of the system (which is the same as the number of segments of line extending from the moving block), and formula_6 is the mechanical efficiency of the system (equal to one for an ideal frictionless system; a fraction less than one for real-world systems with energy losses due to friction and other causes). If formula_7 is the number of sheaves in the purchase, and there is a roughly formula_8% loss of efficiency at each sheave due to friction, then: This approximation is more accurate for smaller values of formula_7 and formula_8. A