Gear creating software

Jack

Something like this?
The travel is adjustable by moving the peg closer or farther from the gear center, and is limited to a linear motion.

SG

Quote:

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Hey guys there is a free vector program, "Inkscape" that will render vector gears of any size: http://inkscape.org/

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I'm fairly pleased with the Inkscape gear generator... nothing exotic like square or elliptical gears, but a good solid gear generator.

I made a gear every increment from 6 tooth to 22 tooth, compared pitch circles, and made a grid that three different gears will "play nicely" on. This is for a very mechanically curious 4 yr old grand son... I'll let you know how they work together after I cut them out.

Steve

Looking good Steve!

I would encourage anyone that may be even mildly interested to try some gears, be they electrically powered or not. It's a lot of fun, limited only by your imagination and shop skills!

@ Steve,
Nice... I was actually thinking of just that kind of system for my (almost) 4yr old to play around with but I have never gotten around to actually working it out. If you get it working well, please post. There will be a lot of really happy and engaged kiddos.

@ Jack,
Steve has it right. The diameter of the travel of the pivot point where it attaches to the gear is = to the stroke length of the piston. (if that makes any sense) though you can do it more simply with a slider on the piston and not need to get into making the oval cam. I'll see if I can work up an illustration if I'm not coming through.

Chris,
I would have thought Steves illustration could be done a few different ways. I would think you could attach it at the first peg without the big oval and and just have the tongue connected to the shaft with a loose pin allowing it to pivot.

Yup, exactly.

Steve what size cutter did you use to cut out your gears above?

edit...nevermind figured it out. did you cut yours yet?

I cut a set out of 1/4" Sintra. I didn't leave enough allowance for a loose fit on a 1/2" dowel and need to re cut. First impression is favorable!

I cut them with a 1/8" "O" flute

The grid is 1/2" Sintra

Steve

post that link here or post it to youtube and link it here. How do you deal with friction of the gears on the spacer plate? Do you have any washers behind the gears?
How are you mounting the gears on top of the other gears?:confused:

Judging by feedback and some PMs not every one who's interested in kinetic sculpture is comfortable designing gears... Hopefully this info will help those who want some help and not bore the rest.

The thing with gears is that you are constrained size wise to what whole tooth multiples give you... you can scale them, but only if you scale the whole series.

I'm attaching a file to help make a cookie cutter approach to designing gears that mesh with each other...

I made a series of 6 to 22 tooth gears... they will all mesh with each other as the teeth are all the same size. The series all have three concentric circles on them, the inner most is a .5" diameter center hole for the axel or pivot, make this whatever size you are going to use. Next is the "pitch circle" or the ideal mesh depth. Overlapping these circles in a design will result in interference or really tight gears that are hard to turn... letting a gap exist between the circles results in a sloppy fit, the more it is, the worse it will be. My grandson's game is a compromise of sizes... I chose a grid spacing that will allow meshing with different sizes and at varying hole spacing, but there will be quite a bit of slop with some combinations. The outer most circle is necessary only to allow the gears to rotate about the center point in the design software.

The numbers I have on each gear are its radius... from center to pitch diameter. Adding any two together will give you the ideal axel spacing for those two gears.

My gears all have a .25 hole .75" from the center... this is to allow any two stacked gears to be pegged together... so a larger gear can be driven by a stacked smaller gear (or vice versa).

My first version of the "kids game" resulted in axel holes too small to rotate on the shaft. I redid these, but have since decided that I want the gear axel combos tight and the grid plate to be a loose fit. Ver. 3 coming soon.

Jack, no washers not a bad idea though.

The attached image shows the method of locking two stacked gears together... a 1/4" steel dowel in the hole located a common distance from center in all gears...

Steve

Video of gears in motion!
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8G...WGdGRFlZZWN2QQ

And the .crv file
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8G...U041VjhDblhfdw