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Templates for Cutting Gears from Wood
- jbj 7y agodo a youtube search for "wintergatan" and you will find an artist making very nice use of wooden gears
- gitgud 7y agoHe says in one of his videos that he uses Mathias's Gear program (the one linked) too
- projektfu 7y agoI was thinking that this would only be good for light duty as at least some of the teeth would be along the grain and liable to break off. Then I went to the homepage and, indeed, there are pictures of gears with the teeth glued in so that they have a different grain from the underlying gear.
- fimdomeio 7y agosaw quite a few people making them with plywood. Should at least in part solve that issue
- crgwbr 7y agoA better option would be to use aircraft or marine grade plywood—somethings that’s guaranteed not to have voids. It’ll be a lot stronger than making the teeth individually and attaching them to a round core.
- bacon_waffle 7y agoThe strength of wood is quite directional; since the plys in plywood are not in the same orientation, it's almost by definition less strong than a solid piece of the same type of properly oriented wood.
- theothermkn 7y agoA lot of people believe this, but it is incorrect. In plywood, the glue transfers the load across the faces of each ply from strand to neighboring strand through the adjacent plies. This can result in a stronger bond between neighboring strands than if no cross-plies were present. This amounts to more than just splitting resistance. As a parallel case, consider multi-ply composite construction, where sheets of fabric, sometimes of sheets with a single fiber orientation, are laid at angles to each other to spread the loads in exactly this way. They both better approximate an isotropic material, and are stronger than an equivalent thickness of singly-oriented plies all in the same orientation.
- abakker 7y agoCan validate. Using Plywood, especially marine plywood is the right choice. It is much stronger.
- bacon_waffle 7y agoSorry, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I agree that wood reinforced glue is stronger than wood, but it's not really speaking to improving a wooden gear as above. Gears are subject to predictable stresses, and so being able to orient a material to best handle those stresses will make a stronger gear. Plywood, like anything else, is a compromise that, as you say, has a more isotropic character. Obviously, there is a wide range of strength in wood, and so plywood. I think it's reasonable to say that one could construct a stronger gear using teeth from readily available solid wood, then readily available plywood. Good luck finding hickory plywood :). To your first sentence though, if you take the same size and quality solid board and piece of plywood at your local hardware store (making a reasonable attempt at an apples-to-apples comparison), the board will be almost certainly be stiffer and stronger with the grain, than the plywood will: https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_12.pdf https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_...
- nofunsir 7y agoUnless he's using scrap wood he's salvaged, Mathias almost always uses birch plywood. He uses the gears in many heavier-than-you-would-think-duty applications. Mathias was an engineer for BlackBerry Ltd. before he retired young.
- DubiousPusher 7y agoVery cool but cutting with a band saw seems very subject to creating irregularities in the gears.
- fimdomeio 7y agoIf you want to go further down the rabbit hole check is youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel
- dougk16 7y agoSort of related tool I made a year or two ago: http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack I used this tool to make a PVC front rack for my bike: http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack/attached_side.jpg http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack/attached_side.jpg I tried to do all the calculations by hand, but eventually realized I needed to make a little custom CAD program like this to help me. I tried more general-purpose CAD programs but couldn't figure out how to set up the constraints I needed. Anyway I think there's a lot of usefulness in purpose-built online tools like this for generating templates and plans. Such programs are pretty easy to whip up too using the Canvas API and a basic geometric primitives library.
- cr0sh 7y agoDo you know about OpenSCAD and OpenJSCAD? https://www.openscad.org/ https://www.openscad.org/ https://openjscad.org/ https://openjscad.org/ They are both basically "CAD/CAM for programmers" - and allow for parametric models to be designed. In fact, there are more than a few models like that on Thingiverse, so if you needed to resize something to fit your needs, you can (plus tons of gear and other similar custom power-transmission systems). Of course, that's all for design and modeling - it wouldn't help for other problems, where some form of calculation and checking of a "model" (in the sense of a simulation or idea - not necessarily a complete physical object rendering) is needed. You see a ton of these kinds of tools in the electronics and hobbyist realms; quick calculators to tell you how much resistance to use for various LED configurations, or 555 timer customizers for common circuits - things like that. I know of one out there which gives you torque/power curves for a variety of different RC hobby electric motors. There are of course several for physics simulation and testing, too...
- avmich 7y ago> it wouldn't help for other problems I once had a problem with OpenSCAD when I needed to sort - within model - objects of different kinds. The example sorting algorithm (a quicksort) is shown in the documentation, but it was working only with a particular kind of objects. Long story short, OpenSCAD turned out to be powerful enough to have a Lisp written in it. Lisp manipulated strings and allowed factoring out the sorting algorithm and applying it with different comparison algorithms, supplied as parameters. Given Lisp, I think it's possible that a lot of things can be done in an OpenSCAD script.
- tiborsaas 7y agoA friend of mine made a similar tool with vector asset export options: https://geargenerator.com/ https://geargenerator.com/
- munk-a 7y agoI am impressed and amused that this tool supports zero spoke gears.
- avmich 7y agoI'm impressed with negative gears :) . No other numbers though?
- tgb 7y agoWhat makes these specifically for wood and not, say, metal?
- abakker 7y agoProbably nothing - It seems mostly that people who cut gears in metal would not use paper templates. In wood, I've cut gears with my CNC Router, that works great for wood precision. In metal, I get a gear cutter set and cut them out of blanks with a lathe/mill. Metal gears tend to be smaller and require much more precision. There's no reason why the shape of these gears wouldn't work, though.
- 6nf 7y agoI think usually metal gears are not cut by laser cutter or CNC router, but instead slotted using a milling cutter one tooth at a time and then the blank is rotated to the next position to cut the next tooth. But of course if your metal gears are large enough to cut from the flat side then this template will work fine.
- bacon_waffle 7y agoThere are many ways to make gears, hobbing is one of the commonly used processes for cutting them from a blank. There is a cutter that looks something like a milling cutter, but it is turned in sync with the gear blank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbing
- MatthiasWandel 7y agoMatthias Wandel here. Funny how my old stuff shows up on hacker news from time to time, though it was less than a year ago that I ported it to javascript, used to be flash, cause when I created it more than ten years ago, javascript canvas wasn't mature enough yet.
- EdwardDiego 7y agoGood on you for sharing it :) I have a friend who loves making machines out of materials on hand (many a stirling engine built from plywood, tin cans, and balloons!), and I've forwarded this link to him.
- jld 7y agoHi Matthias! Big fan of your videos. I hope your tendinitis improves and you can make it back into the shop soon to make more power tools out of old furniture other people have thrown out. Cheers!
- mattoxic 7y agoCheers Matthias - and adding my voice. My kids are a huge fan of yours. And given that youtube has replaced TV in our house your videos are a highlight. They want more and more complex mouse mazes please- multi story if possible.
- Nouser76 7y agoHey, awesome tool! I used it for a hackathon project at Case Western a few years back to make the gears for driving a laser cut wood tank tread for a gameday dip carrying robot. Thanks for making this!
- rmetzler 7y agoI really enjoy your videos. I wish I had the space and time to make stuff out of wood. Software and servers isn't just the same since you can't touch it.
- Jemm 7y agoBig fan Matthias. Just want to say thanks for keeping me inspired during my long illness.
- bityard 7y agoMatthias is one of my personal heros, I've been reading/watching his stuff for years. His videos are mostly what got me into woodworking and made me see it as more than just a way to build furniture. I built a bandsaw, out of wood, based on his plans: http://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a-bandsaw.html http://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a-band...
- Jedd 7y agoFantastic read, thank you. Hopefully you're not put off metric for life -- so much as put off low-quality tools. I'm a bit envious that you have a thicknesser at less than a year 'into woodwork'. Presumably one of the benefits of living in North America. (In AU decent workshop tools are hideously expensive, with limited ranges available domestically.)