Originally Posted by
Kapusta
What angle are you talking about?
Bear with me as I'm an admitted technical idiot, and I'm quite possibly wrong about this, and even if I am correct, I don't have the language to describe it adequately.
Basically, this is a high-tech egg beater lateral to the frame of the bike--when the crank is turned, the not-chain-ring "meshes" with bearings on the front end of the shaft, turning the shaft, which turns a wheel in the back with bearings that "mesh" with the cogs.
The smaller the cog, the farther it is from the center of the axle. So not only does the shaft have to be longer or shorter to shift gears, it also needs to move away further from the wheel to reach the smaller cogs. I assume there's an optimal amount of pressure being applied from the bearing to the ring/cog where there is just enough to transmit the energy but without introducing extraneous friction, so the angle I'm talking about is the one from the center line of the bike lengthwise to the shaft.