Patent ID: 8468904

Claim:
A first gear for use in a gear set including a second gear, said first and second gears for transferring torque between them, said first gear comprising: a) a hub having an axis and a periphery; b) a plurality of curved arms each made of an elastic material, each curved arm having a first end attached to the hub's periphery at a preselected attachment point and a second end coinciding with a line lying in a gear plane perpendicular to the axis and passing through the attachment point, said line making an acute arm angle with a radius line extending from the axis in the gear plane and through the attachment point, said curved arms extending around the entire periphery of the hub, each pair of adjacent curved arms defining a slot between them, said curved arms having a dimension in the gear plane allowing elastic deflection of the curved arms in the gear plane as a cantilevered beam into the slot; c) at the second end of each curved arm, a tooth for meshing with a tooth on the second gear to allow transfer of force between the first gear's tooth and the meshing second gear's tooth; and d) at least one load distributor contacting a second arm and at least a first of the arms defining the slot, each said load distributor for distributing to the second arm at least a portion of force applied to the tooth on the first of the arms and wherein said load distributor includes a material having a high coefficient of restitution.