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Having spent a million dollars making gears, my ultimate conclusion is it’s the sort of thing you machine from brass gear stock unless you want to spend a milli

Having spent a million dollars making gears, my ultimate conclusion is it’s the sort of thing you machine from brass gear stock unless you want to spend a million dollars.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
For what 99.99% of makers are doing, Actobotix is fine. But if you want to make your own fancy differential or a hypercycloid linear translator, yeah, you're gonna have to do it yourself.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
What dimensional scales, materials, turn-around, volume, and/or processing? Breaking tools and getting G-code just right seem like the perpetual headaches of modern machinists. Other than occasionally being bitten by a bitchy blade-like chip begging to fillet your grizzled knuckles one last time before banishment from the bench to the backyard becycling bile of betal bits. If electricity were cheap (or the electric meter rewindable), would multiple beam concurrent FDM be a consideration if the materials and metallurgical characteristics allowed it? I think at some point, it's easier to print complex shapes additively than machine them subtractively, and that needs to be part of structured cost decision-analysis for manufacturing.
- jrockway 5y ago
  I think if you want to make one or two custom gears, you just manually mill them. CNC involves the usual programming tradeoffs -- you spend a ton of time writing and debugging the program, and then you can run the program a million times to make a million parts. For making one part, it's not clear that it's worth the overhead -- just set up your stock on a dividing plate and use a gear cutting tool to cut the teeth. If when you're turning the handwheels the machine makes an unpleasant noise or it feels like you're going to break the tool, stop turning the handwheels and use your brain's built in AI algorithm to develop a new plan ;)
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Usually a short run of a new part doesn't take more than half a day to set up on a CNC. If you are making thousands of parts to run unmanned you might have to add another day to it.
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    Watch AvEs vijeos. Problems. No problems. After they are fixed by the meat confusor. They are solved. Your tool in a vise.
chrisseaton 5y ago
What is 'brass gear stock' as opposed to normal brass?
- reportingsjr 5y ago
  gear stock is basically a gear that's really, really long so you can just cut off whatever width gear you need. Similar to bar stock, which is just rods of metal, but in gear shape.
- auxym 5y ago
  Something like this: http://shop.sdp-si.com/catalog/?cid=p593 http://shop.sdp-si.com/catalog/?cid=p593 So you can decide on a module/PA, buy a few diameters then cut off the required face width you need and machine the bore as needed.

Having spent a million dollars making gears, my ultimate conclusion is it’s the sort of thing you machine from brass gear stock unless you want to spend a million dollars.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

For what 99.99% of makers are doing, Actobotix is fine. But if you want to make your own fancy differential or a hypercycloid linear translator, yeah, you're gonna have to do it yourself.

failwhaleshark 5y ago

What dimensional scales, materials, turn-around, volume, and/or processing? Breaking tools and getting G-code just right seem like the perpetual headaches of modern machinists. Other than occasionally being bitten by a bitchy blade-like chip begging to fillet your grizzled knuckles one last time before banishment from the bench to the backyard becycling bile of betal bits. If electricity were cheap (or the electric meter rewindable), would multiple beam concurrent FDM be a consideration if the materials and metallurgical characteristics allowed it? I think at some point, it's easier to print complex shapes additively than machine them subtractively, and that needs to be part of structured cost decision-analysis for manufacturing.

jrockway 5y ago
I think if you want to make one or two custom gears, you just manually mill them. CNC involves the usual programming tradeoffs -- you spend a ton of time writing and debugging the program, and then you can run the program a million times to make a million parts. For making one part, it's not clear that it's worth the overhead -- just set up your stock on a dividing plate and use a gear cutting tool to cut the teeth. If when you're turning the handwheels the machine makes an unpleasant noise or it feels like you're going to break the tool, stop turning the handwheels and use your brain's built in AI algorithm to develop a new plan ;)
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Usually a short run of a new part doesn't take more than half a day to set up on a CNC. If you are making thousands of parts to run unmanned you might have to add another day to it.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  Watch AvEs vijeos. Problems. No problems. After they are fixed by the meat confusor. They are solved. Your tool in a vise.

chrisseaton 5y ago

What is 'brass gear stock' as opposed to normal brass?

reportingsjr 5y ago
gear stock is basically a gear that's really, really long so you can just cut off whatever width gear you need. Similar to bar stock, which is just rods of metal, but in gear shape.
auxym 5y ago
Something like this: http://shop.sdp-si.com/catalog/?cid=p593 http://shop.sdp-si.com/catalog/?cid=p593 So you can decide on a module/PA, buy a few diameters then cut off the required face width you need and machine the bore as needed.