gear cutters

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I am needing gear cutters with 48 pitch. Buying them is out of the question, would need to take out a mortgage to pay for them. Tried to buy the 9 gears I need, average cost $60.00 , more than I will pay.
I found metric gear cutters that may be close enough, 55 m .
Will the metric cutters be substituted ?
 
SDP/SI still has many steel and brass gears for between 10 and 20 bucks each. 48 pitch are only available in stainless and aluminum. If you can change pitch to 24 the steel and brass come into play.

If you are stuck with the 48 pitch still take a look at the site. There gears cost about half that in stainless. Not knowing the tooth count its hard to compare.
 
If you can harden silver steel (drill rod) you can make your own gear cutters.
And Ivan Law's book Gears and Gear Cutting is the ticket. It's $12.95. Hopefully there's enough coins in the couch cushions for that.
 
What's the application for these? Do they have to run quietly at high torque and speed?
I've had success cutting my own gears cheaply by going the clickspring route and referencing an existing gear to make the cutter profile. No involute math shenanigans required, but it takes a lot longer.
 
The approach used by Ivan Law is to use a circular arc to approximate to the involute from. Two hardened buttons are mounted side by side in a holder. The diameter of the buttons, the gap between them, and the amount of infeed determine the profile imparted to the cutter blank. Here is a button tool for a 40 DP cutter. And the cutter made with it, being used to rework a bought gear. The cutter is made from a piece of gauge plate.

Button_Tool_red.jpg
Gear_recutting.jpg
 
I have Ivan Laws booklet. I'll try it as a last resort.
thanks mike
SDP/SI still has many steel and brass gears for between 10 and 20 bucks each. 48 pitch are only available in stainless and aluminum. If you can change pitch to 24 the steel and brass come into play.

If you are stuck with the 48 pitch still take a look at the site. There gears cost about half that in stainless. Not knowing the tooth count its hard to compare.
Steve ,tried to contact SDP/PI. Listed the gears I need. Email was declined. I bought 4cutters from Travers . Got tired of trying to source gears.
mike
 
I have looked at my hob collection and I don’t have one in 48 dp, I can buy one on eBay at reasonable cost, say $60, so I am happy to cut any 48 dp gear up to about 5” diameter to your dimensions.
The advantage is that they will all be true form which is better than the compromise shape you get with low tooth counts.
I have done gears for friends in other parts of the World ( I am in the UK) and saved them a lot of money and trouble. This is my/hobby, not a business, I just want to cover costs so:if there is enough interest in 48 dp gears, I will get the hob and amortise part of the cost over the batch, I then have the hob for future use and you get gears at sensible prices.
 
I have Ivan Laws booklet. I'll try it as a last resort.
thanks mike

Steve ,tried to contact SDP/PI. Listed the gears I need. Email was declined. I bought 4cutters from Travers . Got tired of trying to source gears.
mike
Hi Mike l live in the UK and had the same problem sourcing 48DP gear cutters for the JH v-twin. I also had a thread on this platform. Douglas in Pennsylvania very kindly purchased them from Travers on my behalf. He posted them to the UK last week.
In the meantime I'm experimenting with gear hobbing.
I hope the Travers gear cutters work okay. I see mine are of Chinese origin.
Cheers
Andrew
 
Here's something I posted a few years back on home gear-cutting.

It covers generating your own profiles (using AutoCad or similar) and making your own cutters etc. etc.

Regards, Ken
 

Attachments

  • Gearcutting.pdf
    2.5 MB
I have had good results with a self made gear hob cutter, instructions on the web. see link www.jeffree.co.uk/pages/multi-tooth-gear-cutter.htm
For me the difficult part beeing the heat treatment. (I failed on heat treatment so far)
K1600_P1000897.JPG
DIY workpiece spindle was my first bigger project, using it since then.

Here's something I posted a few years back on home gear-cutting.

It covers generating your own profiles (using AutoCad or similar) and making your own cutters etc. etc.

Regards, Ken
I just had a short glimpse, I saved the write up on my SSD, I hope that is permitted. :cool:

Making hobbing tools appears to be easier than making involute cutters.
 
Back to the OP ... in general, metric (module) cutters are much more available at a hobby price than are imperial (dpi). I've seen .5 module cutters fairly readily available; that would get you very close to 48 dpi, perhaps close enough to fudge it. Certainly if you have freedom to adjust dimensions / gear placement just slightly, but you may be able to get away with cutting it "as if" it were 48 dpi while using the .5m cutters. You mentioned 55 (presumable .55m; that would be even closer to 48dpi, but I've never seen cutters in that size. If you can find them affordably, I'd say you could almost certainly use them in place of the 48dpi without any modification - that's my guess, not based on personal experience.
 

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