Tech 101: How multiple planetary gears work together in a transmission

Pay attention, grunts! Last week, thanks to the U.S. Army’s instructional video series that’s made its way to YouTube, we took a look at how fluid couplings work. We’ll return to that series today for a brief overview of planetary gears, the natural followup in understanding the basic operation principles of an automatic transmission. Actually, this appears to be the second in a two-part video on planetary gears, covering the more complicated combinations of multiple planetary gears (the first part appears to either have been lost or not yet uploaded), but it does start with an overview of how planetary gears work.