
Gear Generator - danshapiro
http://geargenerator.com/
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jonjenk
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](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.

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unwind
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).

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dspillett
_> the history is flooded with geargenerator.com addresses_

I'm seeing this a lot in apps these days. In many places I think it is
intentional: where the entire state of the current view can be encoded in the
URL it effectively gives you a "free" undo feature and can be quite useful
(like when I'm playing with potential new running routes in Google maps).

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peterclary
Yes, and that can be useful. However, if you use the back button to return to
a previous URL it doesn't appear to update the settings from the URL. This
means you can't use the back button as an Undo button.

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degenerate
Agree - I'd much prefer an "undo/redo" button inside the app, instead of
flooding my history state. They can change the URL all they want (for
linkability) but leave my damn history alone!

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danshapiro
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](http://community.glowforge.com/t/gears/143/4)

~~~
exodust
Wow, okay... that just happened. Instead of wanting a 3D printer, I now want
one of these 3D laser printers.

Tested video gives a good overview... youtu.be/0R3mMUsHFvU

Need to see more reviews showing negative aspects. There's always negatives.

Edit: found a negative: shipping price. To Australia it's US$1380 for the
model with air filter. That's crazy. Almost 2 grand Australian dollars for
shipping.

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danshapiro
Founder/CEO here (the guy in the Tested video). Happy to answer any questions!
Shipping stinks - we don't make a penny on it; it's just expensive to send big
boxes around the world.

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exodust
Ok thanks. This thread was about the gear generator so I won't ask anything
here. I'll go to glowforge.com if I need to know more.

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KaiserPro
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.

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amelius
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?

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IshKebab
The constraint is that the gears don't speed up and slow down (the gear ratio
is constant). Also that the contact forces lie on a line.

There's a good animation on wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involute_gear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involute_gear)

Involute gears are the only shape that satisfy those constraints.

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pjkundert
Take a look at the "Ikona" non-involute gear form. The contact forces form a
curve instead of a line, with zero backlash, and multiple tooth contacts
before/after top dead center. Amazing:

[http://www.ikona.ca/technologies_tooth.shtml](http://www.ikona.ca/technologies_tooth.shtml)

And the patents are about to expire...

EDIT: An application of the Ikona gear tooth form, implementing a CVT with no
clutch plate or other frictional components:

[http://www.powertransmission.com/issues/1008/ikona.pdf](http://www.powertransmission.com/issues/1008/ikona.pdf)

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

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phkahler
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?

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Asbostos
Any clearance there would result in backlash. I suppose you need some to allow
for manufacturing tolerance though.

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phkahler
That's fine, but when I first looked at it, it seemed like they were sliding.
Now I see that it may be rolling as desired.

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11thEarlOfMar
Sweet. Do you have an example of a planetary gear reduction?

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danshapiro
Funny you should ask - I made a friend a laser cut model of his Prius
transmission for his birthday.

Cutting it (on a pre-Glowforge laser):
[https://goo.gl/photos/pxJKDipWPtj6RXvZ7](https://goo.gl/photos/pxJKDipWPtj6RXvZ7)

Results:
[https://goo.gl/photos/NUivutAWsQe3GHfW8](https://goo.gl/photos/NUivutAWsQe3GHfW8)

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Nice!

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fnordfnordfnord
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.

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peterclary
This is amazing! Well done and thank you!

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oldpond
Very nice.

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osullivj
Very cool! The guys at [http://romaxtech.com](http://romaxtech.com) should
take a look at this...

