Kurt Hain

Kurt Hain (born May 24, 1908 in Leipzig ; † January 7, 1985 in Braunschweig ) was a German mechanical engineer. For over 40 years he was the leading representative of practical (level) machine kinematics in Germany.

life and work

After training as a locksmith and lathe operator, Hain studied mechanical engineering at the higher mechanical engineering school in Leipzig with Paul Knechtel . From 1931 he worked in various industrial companies in Leipzig, Dresden and Dessau (development engineer in the Junkers aircraft factory) before he went to the aviation research institute in Braunschweig in 1939. After the Second World War, it became the Research Institute for Agriculture. In 1948 he became group leader there and in 1961 department head for kinematics at the Institute for Basic Agricultural Research. In 1973 he retired.

From 1967 to 1977 he was a lecturer for applied transmission theory at the TU Braunschweig .

In 1957 he was on a lecture and study tour in the USA and gave an overview of the state of research in Germany on machine kinematics since the war at a conference at Purdue University . In 1961 he was visiting professor at Yale University and in 1965/66 at MIT. He was also visiting professor in Delft, Udine, Eindhoven and Bologna.

He wrote more than 380 scientific articles and 13 books (with new editions). He designed 176 mechanism models (the collection, including some of the models he had developed, he built up from 1959) and dealt with almost all areas of machine kinematics. Various methods and terms originate from him (rotary thrust path, point locking gear, pole force method, point position reduction, drawing sequence calculation method). In the 1960s he used computers to calculate transmission atlases, three of which he published from 1967 to 1973.

In 1963 he received the Max Eyth commemorative coin, in 1964 the VDI medal of honor in gold, in 1981 the VDI honor plaque and in 1970 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the TH Darmstadt. In 1971 he received the First Class Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was an honorary member of the International Federation for the Theory of Machines and Mechanisms (IFToMM).

Its mechanisms have been included in the research project Digital Mechanisms and Gear Library (DMG-Lib).

Fonts (selection)

• Precision engineering, Giessen 1953
• Applied gear theory, Schroedel Verlag 1952, 2nd edition VDI Verlag 1961
  • English edition: Applied Kinematics, McGraw Hill 1967
• Gear teaching, part 1, Hanser 1963
• Gear atlas for adjustable oscillating rotary motion, Vieweg 1967
• Influences of joint play and friction on the forces acting in the transmission, VDI Verlag 1969
• Atlas for transmission constructions, Vieweg 1972
• Transmission example atlas, VDI Verlag 1973
• Transmission technology - kinematics for AOS and UPN computers, Vieweg 1981
• with H. Schumny: articulated gear construction with HP series 40 and 80, Vieweg 1984
• Articulated gears for handling and robotics, Vieweg 1984
• Gear calculations for high demands with utilization of coupling curve curvatures, VDI Verlag 1987

literature

• Hanfried Kerle: Kurt Hain (1908–1985), in: Marco Ceccarelli (Ed.), Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science, Volume 1, Springer 2007, pp. 183–215

Web links

• Website about Hain in DMG-Lib , with publications