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Encyclopedic overview
Worm and worm wheel
A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm (which is a gear in the form of a screw) meshes with a worm wheel (which is similar in appearance to a spur gear). Its main purpose is to translate the motion of two perpendicular axes or to translate circular motion to linear motion (example: band type hose clamp).The two elements are also called the worm screw and worm gear. The terminology is often confused by imprecise use of the term worm gear to refer to the worm, the worm wheel, or the worm drive as a unit.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “worm drive” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.