Check out my handy tips for making a quick and accurate gear in Rhino 5. This is part 1 of 2.
We use this technique in my college course when working on the ‘steampunk robot’ project.
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Dave,
Nice and quick, but really isn’t accurate in the sense that you can’t control the tooth thickness directly.
Nick
Yes, I remember GearGen. I guess I just wondered if Dave’s technique was only for illustration. Which it does nicely and quickly.
Nick
Good suggestion! I had heard about that script, but not used it yet. Thanks for the reminder.
You are correct that this technique is not for manufacturing – or anything mechanically accurate! I developed this only for use in my classroom so that students could make gear-shapes for our steampunk robot project. I also avoid using scripts for the same reason; I want the students to develop good practices first.
Nice & Simple !
Thanks a lot dave, it was a good intro to the curve Boolean command for me. I figured I’d try out a few different ways of doing it in addition to your method, and of course making a solid model with the hole. I did however get it to work using an array command. I used the inner and outer tooth circles first, then only selected a tooth profile with no tooth gapping. Then I was able to join, trim, split, etc…, remove the star crosseection trinagles. Made it easier to do the 20 by dragging from the right to touch them, cutting time in half deleting. It also sparked my interest in learning gears, as this is kinda one of my goals with designs I have pending. The gears are not real critical, and involve no motors, but I still am not gonna half donkey it, and take the opportunity to learn gears, motors, shafts, pulleys for the many projects I have. Anyways, thanks for the tutorial. There’s infinite ways to skin a cat, but selling cat pelts doesn’t fly that well in most markets? ANyways, I found I real good site explaining gears, showing great descriptions of gear creation, equations, where and what the circle profiles are, angles of the dangles, and how to professionally engineer them. (minus the motor speeds, torque, and all that super intense physics) So, it could help a farmer hookup a polishing buff or something. I am pretty much going to be copying the images into rhino, or recreating them. Along with screenshots/photoshopped of what I made in rhino with diagrams/notes, back into rhino so that I have something like a working interactive version of is on that page. Then, I will learn a little about the motor/pulley physics, and it can help me learn how to maintain lathes a little, engineer some tools, etc…All I will need is German Discipline, and to not get all caught up in my American luxuries, just kidding
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