PTC Creo - Parametric gears for laser cutting

[TimBrotherhood]

These gears have involute teeth so will mesh correctly and transmit motion smoothly.

The zip file contains a PDF that explains how everything works including exporting a DXF to cut the gears on a laser cutter.

[TomD.inPDX]

Great document, Tim!  Generating that involute always gets me.

Do you have the non-educational version of Creo available?  I cannot open the models with the full version of Creo.

[JoshH]

That's beautiful Tim!  One of my FIRST, FRC coaches is also a physics teacher.  I was mentioning the importance of involute tooth geometry and hadn't gotten back to him on decent documentation!  Thank you for taking care of that for me!

I especially like the involute equation in developing the tooth geometry for these gears!

Thanks!!!

[JoshH]

Dude, we really need to get you involved in mentoring a FIRST team!! 

[RoyHandley]

Tim - This is excellent and really demonstrates the power of a parametric drawing program. Is it just me or is the mesh between the gears incorrect? Unfortunately, I don't yet know enough about the Mechanism Application to put this right for myself.

I look forward to 'playing' with this more.

Roy

[TimBrotherhood]

Roy,

Thanks for the kind words. When setting up a a gear connection its possible to align the teeth but when one of the gears is resized the mesh changes. It's possible to realign the teeth after re-sizing.

The Precision LMS modules on mechanisms should fill in all the gaps.

Tim

[TimBrotherhood]

I cannot claim the credit for the individual models. 

I believe the original came from a German AE, It worked really well but was not very student friendly with no annotation and letters representing variables. 

Adam Haas did a major re-design on the parametric gear model with variable names and annotations. 

I created the gear assembly so students can define the ratio and run the analysis to check everything works before outputting to manufacture.

[TimBrotherhood]

We are in disussions with the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) about launching FTC in the UK but funding is a stumbling block for them and prospective teams.  Last time I checked, the FTC kit costs nearly £1000 ($1500) here in the UK and that doesn't include the entry fees!