GearHeads Forum

Thanks - that helps a lot.

Hi:

I believe it is a gt2..but its been awhile since I printed it so I cant swear to it..

  I dont usually add the hubs and such, but you can add a set screw hub for 3d printing,
though you have to drill it yourself afterwards. ( I figured printing the hole just makes it weaker..)

On the project screen, select a gear or pulley. Youll see two edit boxes on the lower properties window
labeled collar width and radius. Set them appropriately and hit respoke..

You should get a collar like this gear shows..

Art

Looks very nice :) is that also GT2-2 profile?

Please don't get me wrong, I am not in any way trying to knock Gearotic, I am still learning to use it and aim to use it to design some clocks and kinetic sculptures, but I have not as yet seen any options for belt retainers, hubs or retaining screws, maybe I am simply not looking hard enough.

Whilst I can add all of these in some other program like Sketchup/Rhino, etc - as I did for the first gear I posted, where I could just as easily have generated the tooth profile in Gearotic (had I had a license at the time) and then added all the other parts after the fact, which in this case I had to do anyway.

For this gear I simply wanted to cut out a few extra steps and tools in the workflow, the whole gear took about 60 seconds from initial requirement to generating the final STL file ready for printing.

That being said, the script has a very limited number of tooth profiles and can only generate one gear at a time - it is intended for generating gears for use in belt drive systems and has limited use beyond that - Gearotic is way more powerful in nearly every aspect, not least in its list of supported gear and movement types.

I am currently designing an automatic tool changer for my Mini Mill and am making use of an 8 position Geneva mechanism that will be created by Gearotic, the current one I have in the Sketchup model was drawn from first principles using a spreadsheet to do all of the calculations.

I actually created it in Gearotic, it took seconds, but then I couldn't save it as my demo had expired, this is obviously not an issue any more.
[img]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8574/16694025635_15fa03ba9e_m.jpg[/img]

Hi :

HEre's a gearotic one printed on an UP! printer..

Art

Here is a 48 tooth GT2 gear I just printed, for the Z axis reduction gearing on my laser cutter.
[img]https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8647/16693449405_80a68c5292_m.jpg[/img]
You can see a slight bend in the top rim, this is where I squeezed it  to remove it from the heated bed before it had fully hardened.

The slight mess around the captive nut for the grub screw is from where I slipped with the soldering iron pushing the nut into place :)

The gear was generated by the Openscad script I mentioned previously from [url=http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16627]Thingiverse[/url] and exported as an STL ready to be sliced and printed - all of the required settings are already in the script - gear profile, gear height, hub diameter, hub height, bore size, number of grub screws, top and bottom retainers, etc, you just edit the settings at the beginning then render and export.

For what it does, it does it very well, however it has nowhere near the functionality of Gearotic, and you are generating a single gear in isolation, not a gear train, nor any of the many complex gear types Gearotic is capable of.

Unfortunately Peachy hasn't been able to deliver a working product, and is two years late.  Since they posted a recent comment on KS they're still around (unlike some KS projects), but so far nothing works well enough to ship.

With a little poking around, in addition to the KS funds they raised another $75K on indigogo, and claim to have taken $166K in preorders.  Not quite a million dollars US, but after two years of development it does raise some doubt about whether or not there's enough money left over to build and ship all those promised printers.  It's astounding how much money these 3D printer campaigns raise, especially considering the number of them that never send the ordered device to those who paid for it.

Kirk

Well thats just genius ..

  I had often wondered if the sound card should be used as an analogue source, they seem to have
done it well. The resin looks a bit spotty.. and I suspect they have issue with the size of the laser spot, ( focusing over
a distance can be a bugger as the spot size usually is too big..

  True genius though to tie it all together that way, salt water to hold the layer till its activated and such..

Ill keep my eye on this one, its a remarkable idea...

Art

I may yet do some more research on the resin in that case, I know some resins can be a bit smelly, I covered one of my flat roofs in fibreglass recently - that stuff is quite potent.

Not sure if you guys have heard about this one - a UV laser based resin printer where you can buy all the key components $100.00, uses a novel printing method - sound! and gets around the deep bath of resin requirement by floating a layer of resin on a Z axis of salt water! it is the [url=http://www.peachyprinter.com/]Peachy[/url] printer that funded 13 times over on [url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc]Kickstarter[/url] in October 2013.

Some very interesting and very different ideas in use with this SLA printer and a firm commitment to OpenSource into the bargain.

I was considering building a resin one, I made the resin and tested it, and with a uv laser it did harden fine. ( You can get the oxalic acid from a surfboard company and make your own resin pretty cheaply.. just add fibreglass or polyvinyl resin and it becomes uv triggered..

  but too smelly for me I think...

Art



 

This is my blog for the [url=http://zebethyalprusa.blogspot.co.uk/]3D Printer(s)[/url]

And this is the one for the [url=http://zebethyallaser.blogspot.co.uk/]Laser Cutter[/url]

I keep contemplating a DIY DLP resin based printer, like this one on [url=http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-high-resolution-3D-DLP-printer-3D-printer/]Instructables[/url] but really only for the build kudos rather than choosing to make much stuff with it over my filament printer(s).

Currently the biggest downside for me is the resin, it has a limited shelf life and is not exactly cheap (even for [url=http://www.makerjuice.com/]MakerJuice[/url]), with a minimum quantity in the bath required for the print to progress.



I concede though that this style of printing has the potential for much more detailed and smoother prints.

I would also be worried about parts falling off the upside down build platform as they grew/became heavier, I have enough issues with items coming off my build platform that has gravity working in its favour :)

Since I am all about making things cheaply, $40.00-$90.00 a litre for resin, is not really a winning argument for me, compared to $20.00 a Kg for PLA filament - I currently pay about £12.00 per Kg (1Kg of 1.75mm PLA is about 0.95 of a litre by volume).