The thing to remember about a CVT is that it's held together by a rubber band. Materials engineering has gotten very good at making stronger rubber bands that don't snap under hard use, but the application you have in mind sounds like an awful lot of wear and tear for a rubber band to undergo.
And, if the whole setup is tuned very specifically on the CVT working properly and the rubber band goes snap, that could be a bad thing.
There's also these toroidal Centroid continuously variable transmissions. But they rely on friction and have small contact surfaces.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/cvt3.htm
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The thing to remember about a CVT is that it's held together by a rubber band. Materials engineering has gotten very good at making stronger rubber bands that don't snap under hard use, but the application you have in mind sounds like an awful lot of wear and tear for a rubber band to undergo.
And, if the whole setup is tuned very specifically on the CVT working properly and the rubber band goes snap, that could be a bad thing.
CVT's in automobiles rely primarily upon metal chains for drive, not rubber bands.
They are sort of metallic rubber bands.
There's also these toroidal Centroid continuously variable transmissions. But they rely on friction and have small contact surfaces. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/cvt3.htm