Monday, January 15, 2018

rhino gear gen script













The damaged rolling mill gear sent me down a rabbit hole of learning more about spur gears that I previously knew. I went searching for a replacement gear that I might be able to modify for the rolling mill. The measurements that we took with the machinist microscope helped me narrow down the specs on the gear. I wanted to make sure this would fit before purchasing so I took the additional specifications from the gears found on Motion Industries and went looking for a gear generator. In the past I had used geargenerator, but when I went and tried the program, it didn't let me create the gear with these specifications. I went looking for a different program that would allow me to type in the specifications and then I could generate a gear that I could 3D print and test to make sure the gear would work before ordering one. I also thought about casting such a gear from the print since I have been doing quite a bit of casting from prints lately. I knew this would be too soft though. Regardless, having a 3D printed gear would allow me to test things to make sure the part was correct. I found a much older Rhino Script called GearGen (it was written for Rhino v3 and v4), and downloaded the script to see if it would work with Rhino 5. Sure enough the script worked. It requires that you have a base circle to apply the script to, but it allows you to set pressure angle, number of teeth, pitch, etc. I generated a gear, extruded it in Rhino, and made a print. The printed gear fits nicely. I think I can place an order now. Good to know that I can generate gears easily within Rhino...






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