Gears for your CAD program

[dave-in-england]

Hi All,

Those who need to make up gears in their cad programs know that it can be a long and tedious process getting everything right.

Here is an inexpensive and clever little program where you can make just about any type of gear that you need, with all the maths worked out for you.

The program exports the gear shapes in .DXF and several other formats that cad programs can import.

If you have 3D cad the gears can be extruded into real working gears.

Watch the video and download the trial version.
No sign-ups needed.


Every function in the paid version is in the trial version, but the trial version has warped gears, but even those can be downloaded and made into real gears !
Not much use though !

There are a lot of options in this program and well worth playing with.

http://woodgears.ca/gear/


dave

 

[LSEW]

Another possibility for those looking for something a little more upscale is Gearotic Motion. I use this program to make gears for Solidworks projects.
It will do helical gears, bevel gears and spur gears as well as with a lot of additional things. I believe they also have a free trial.

maury
www.lonestarengineworks.com

 

[petertha]

Here is a link to method using Solidworks. Likley reproducible in any other cad program, its all 2D constructs

http://grabcad.com/questions/tutori...te-gears-in-solidworks-and-show-design-intent

I think I drew one just to make one. But for my own projects, I came to the conclsion of why bother developing & showing the teeth unless you are actually going to make the gear itself. They look aesthetically pleasing in the drawing for sure. But unless I'm missing something, all you really need for design is the PD, OD & tooth depth circles & show the gears as simple extruded blanks. Uglier yes, but also easier & faster refresh. This facilitates the gear mesh layout centers, clearance issues or desired mods to gear blanks.

Even with gear motion simulation like SW, its not really doing anything tooth-to-tooth. You just define gear ratio's or relative tooth counts (same thing) but you may as well be rotating an apple & banana for all it cares.

Im not sure angled or bevel gears would work quite as well as my simpleton shortcut method though...

 

[dave-in-england]

Sure, we can use gear mates to make blank disks work together as gears, but that just does not
have the same realism when used in an animation or video...