from Hacker News

Gear Generator

by danshapiro on 10/1/15, 4:05 AM with 31 comments

• by jonjenk on 10/1/15, 2:14 PM

  I've created a lot of 3D printed gears over the last few years and one of the best tools I've found is from Rainer Hessmer.

  http://hessmer.org/gears/InvoluteSpurGearBuilder.html

  It allows you to specify additional parameters like backlash, clearance, and profile shift. It also allows you to output in DXF which tends to be more of a standard in the engineering world.

• by unwind on 10/1/15, 8:11 AM

  Looks fantastic, and was seriously fun to fiddle a bit with.

  One bug though: you can't back out from the site, the history is flooded with geargenerator.com addresses. Had to close the tab (Firefox 40.0.3 on Windows).

• by danshapiro on 10/1/15, 4:07 AM

  The best part of this is that you can output the gears as SVGs. For example, gear + Glowforge = http://community.glowforge.com/t/gears/143/4

• by KaiserPro on 10/1/15, 12:26 PM

  This is majestic.

  I've been battling with making my own gears in Modo for a while (the inbuilt primitive scales the teeth size as well as number of teeth)

  However this allows me to create ratios AND test them at the same time. This is invaluable.

  When I get time I shall be using this for my laser cuttings.

• by amelius on 10/1/15, 10:13 AM

  One thing I'm wondering about: do opposing gears always need to have the same form for the teeth? Also, what are the constraints that lead to the form of the teeth? I can imagine that one constraint is that the teeth must "roll" onto each other. But are there more constraints?

• by crome on 10/2/15, 5:15 AM

  Here s a referral link you can use to get 100$ off, im super stoked on this!! :) http://glowforge.com/referred/?kid=kmrbvD

• by phkahler on 10/1/15, 12:39 PM

  Is that correct? The tip of the gear tooth seems to rub up against the other as it approaches. Shouldn't there be a small clearance there? or is there?

  Also, is there a way to export to a format that can be loaded into SolveSpace?

• by 11thEarlOfMar on 10/1/15, 4:12 AM

  Sweet. Do you have an example of a planetary gear reduction?

• by fnordfnordfnord on 10/1/15, 12:49 PM

  Neat. Now I want to be able to give the gears mass, and configure the "engine's" power output; and or maybe helical gear teeth.

• by peterclary on 10/1/15, 10:32 AM

  This is amazing! Well done and thank you!

• by oldpond on 10/1/15, 3:38 PM

  Very nice.

• by osullivj on 10/1/15, 8:52 AM

  Very cool! The guys at http://romaxtech.com should take a look at this...