Everyone knows that a car has an engine to power it, but not everyone is familiar with a clutch or how it works. This mechanism both engages and disengages your power transmission from the driving shaft to the driven shaft. It connects rotating shafts, and there can be two or more of these under your hood. If you drive a manual transmission, the clutch is connected to both the shaft coming from the engine and the shafts that turn the wheels. While the motor is going to spin constantly, you don’t want the wheels continually spinning.
One of the rotating shafts is going to be connected to the engine or power unit, this will be the driving member, while the other rotating shaft, or driven member, provides output for work. For example, a drill has a shaft that’s driven by a motor and one that’s driven by a drill chuck. HowStuffWorks explains that the clutch connects the shafts so they can be engaged (spin at the same speed), slipping (spinning at different speeds), or disengaged (spinning at different speeds). Typically, you’ll find that these motions are rotary; although, linear clutches are possible.
