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Cotter (pin)
Pin or wedge passing through a hole to fix parts tightly together
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Pin or wedge passing through a hole to fix parts tightly together
A cotter is a pin or wedge with a flat bearing surface passing through a hole to fix parts tightly together. In British usage cotter pin has the same meaning, but in the U.S. it means a split pin.
Typical applications are in fixing a crank to its crankshaft, as in a bicycle, and a piston rod to a crosshead, as in a steam engine. The angle of the wedge determines the position of the parts being held; therefore, on a bicycle, the pedal arms will only be at 180 degrees to each other if the angle of the cotter pin's wedge is the same on both pins.
Popular usage
Formerly, it was common to mount bicycle cranks using a cotter, although now a more easily maintained arrangement is typically used, such as a square tapered or splined interface. These cotters have a short threaded section at the narrower end of the taper, which is used to hold the cotter in place with a washer and nut. They are also used to secure ceiling fans to prevent falling if the mounting nut loosens.
References
References
- Van der Plas, Rob. (December 2023). "The Bicycle Repair Book: The New Complete Manual of Bicycle Care". MBI Publishing Company.
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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