[Plugin] SPGears

Trogluddite

Hi Again,
re: Bug Report
I've now checked out the plugin on a couple of other machines in the office - all working perfectly; an excellent piece of Rubying!
The alternative machines all have a clone of the plugin folder on the troublesome one - so it looks to be a problem with the OS or SU installation on my main machine. The only bugsplat dump that I managed to find was just a mess of raw binary - but if you have the ability to decode it, I can post it up if you think it may be useful.
Thanks for your efforts so far - but as I seem to be the only user having trouble, please don't expend too much effort on this lone bug report. As it happens, our IT team are just setting me up with a new PC - so with any luck, I'll get to use your plugin to make some funky gear trains in a day or two anyway!

jgrundman

@trogluddite said:

...so it looks to be a problem with the OS or SU installation on my main machine.

Trog,
Thanks for the update. I'm having similar issues on my end. My 2 yr old notebook (I used to write the code) was giving my fits with the animation. When I tried it on my 12 yr old desktop, animation was smooth and ran for 800+ frames before crappping out. That's why I took down the warning about animation issues. I think my problem is too many background apps taxing the processors, but I haven't tested it yet. Anyway, glad to hear its working on other machines.

jgrundman

@sdmitch said:

...what parameter values did you enter to achieve the various gears?

For the larger diameter samples, I used the default 10" radius and the smaller ones are between 5" and 7" radius (don't recall, exactly). The beveled and flat gears are different bevel angles of 45 and 90 degrees, respectively. The helicals are all 30 degrees, except the mate to the long pair which is -30 degrees. The bevel can be set to negative values, putting the teeth on the interior, but the results are less than satisfactory. I will be adding true "internal" gears in version 2. I also need to redo the beveled helical since the current params result in a semi-hypoid shape.

bheffernan

Thanks for this plugin. I'm a longtime user of gear.3.rb and this looks like an upgrade.

Addition of worm gear function would be great. I'm struggling with getting a parametric worm gear in sketchup which I use to export to .stl and print on a 3D printer for various projects. The hard part (as discussed in this thingiverse model: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:9827) is the worm gear part.

Anyway, thanks again,
Brendan

Trogluddite

Hi Again,
Just a little follow up on that old bug report.
The IT guys finally got my new machine set up - and, oh no, the plugin was still having problems...
...until I went into the BIOS and increased MoBo GPU RAM to 500MB instead of the paltry 32MB allocated by default (had to use the MoBo, as the supposedly nice graphics card they put in couldn't even handle the SU view port!).
It now strikes me that this might have been the problem with the old PC - that also was using the MoBo graphics, and can't have have 500MB GPU space because the whole machine only had 1GB installed!
Here's a piccy of the first completed project...

...suffice to say, the boss was well pleased, especially as upcoming projects will require much more complex gear trains than this.

Many thanks for your excellent tool,
Trog

sofie9536

Thank you, the gears are perfect for use in sketchyphysics

mikaelgu

First of all a huge thank you!
I've been looking for a way to have custom gears made for a while until I found this plugin. Decided to try it out by drawing a pair of helical beveled gears and had them 3d-printed. As far as I can tell, the gears mesh beautifully and work axactly as they should!
I just have one small wish: It would be great if the center guide that is created for the (bevel) gears would extend all the way to tip of the pitch cone. It would speed up aligning the gears in sketchup significantly.

tulacong

oh my god thank you

mikaelgu

Found a small bug:
Regardless of the unit of measure of pitch radius, the face width is always measured in inches, makes it a little harder to make gears of certain widths when using the metric system.

2Tricky

I am brand new to this Plugin and Sketchup. I had no problems in principle with this plugin - I'm using Win 7. My aim is to create gcode and so far I have played with the plugin gear.3.rb to make the gears and the Phlatboyz plugin for gcode. However, I was dissapointed to find that gear.3.rb uses all straightline segments which to cut a long story short, makes the code too long for our mill. I was hoping for arcs in this plugin but it too uses straight lines. I'd love arcs to be a feature of this plugin.

Cheers

Krisidious

Sweeet Plugin.

jgrundman

2Tricky,
I sent you a private message for additional information, but have since discovered the source of the issue you are having. The problem is not the plug-in, but a limitation within Sketchup. A Sketchup 'curve' is a collection of points and edges, not a true, continuous curve (as a mathematical function). The only way you could get a smoother curve would be to increase the number of segments (edges), but I doubt that would solve the problem you are having.
-J-

@2tricky said:

I am brand new to this Plugin and Sketchup. I had no problems in principle with this plugin - I'm using Win 7. My aim is to create gcode and so far I have played with the plugin gear.3.rb to make the gears and the Phlatboyz plugin for gcode. However, I was dissapointed to find that gear.3.rb uses all straightline segments which to cut a long story short, makes the code too long for our mill. I was hoping for arcs in this plugin but it too uses straight lines. I'd love arcs to be a feature of this plugin.

Cheers

jgrundman

I'll try to fix that. Thanks for the heads-up.

@mikaelgu said:

Found a small bug:
Regardless of the unit of measure of pitch radius, the face width is always measured in inches, makes it a little harder to make gears of certain widths when using the metric system.

fcborik

Hello,

This plug-in looked very nice, and I downloaded it from the plug-in store. It worked great about 3-4 times, and then I started getting bug-splats. I tried removing and reinstalling the plug-in, with the same results. Fortunately I have the original gear that the plug in made (it really is nice!) and I think I'll be able to take various components from it and make the other gear that I need. However, making brand new gears will be a challenge to me. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Frank

weldingrod1

I'm impressed! Making each tooth a group is an interesting idea!

Is there any chance you would be willing to add something to deal with gears where the depth doesn't match the diametral pitch? I would be happy to make a PayPal donation to help this along! My specific application is Hardinge change gears. For some reason, they decided to use 20 degree pressure angle, 22 pitch gears, but with a gear tooth depth corresponding to 29 pitch. The technical description is as follows:
Fellows 22/29 Stub Pitch, 20 Deg PA, .003" to .004" Backlash
Diameter over wires includes allowance. For backlash and odd number of teeth. Use two .0785" wires for checking over teeth.

Face Width - .370" / .375" Bore - .625" / .6265" Keyway - .125" Bore to top of key - .693" No Heat Treating

Note: The 22/29 stub pitch has the pitch diameter of a 22 DP gear (N/DP). The tooth depth is that of a 29 DP gear. Whole depth is 2.25/29=.0776". The addendum is the tooth amount above the pitch line (1/29)=.0345". The Std. OD is, PD plus two addendums (n/22) + 2(1/29). Hardinge gears are .005" less than std OD.

Here's a description of the Fellows Stub tooth form:
http://books.google.com/books?id=x2GThADLN-sC%26amp;pg=PA31%26amp;lpg=PA31%26amp;dq=stub+pitch+gear%26amp;source=bl%26amp;ots=6aF1puqw8N%26amp;sig=QOR5ORl4NdVsN3vc7_6eZ6G-Qwc%26amp;hl=en%26amp;sa=X%26amp;ei=SjinUsSaN8P7kQeI1YGABw%26amp;ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage%26amp;q=stub%20pitch%20gear%26amp;f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=kotyj80OMCoC%26amp;pg=SA2-PA12%26amp;lpg=SA2-PA12%26amp;dq=stub+tooth+gear%26amp;source=bl%26amp;ots=upTfFTO6dI%26amp;sig=p1a0YVGS8o0UPwPBNgGLZeGgoMo%26amp;hl=en%26amp;sa=X%26amp;ei=LjmnUt2DEI-3kAfus4CIBA%26amp;ved=0CEYQ6AEwCg#v=onepage%26amp;q=stub%20tooth%20gear%26amp;f=false

pastprimitive

So this is an absolutely amazing gear plugin! Huge blessing for me and my 3d printer. THANKYOU!

Small bug that I fixed. The plugin only except's values in inches for the "pitch radius/rack" user input field.

For my 3d printer you pretty much want to work in mm because everything in that world is in mm. Anyhow changes outlined below for making this universally compatible regardless of what unit it designated in the user input fields.

Updated plugin for universal unit compatibility in user input fields.

Select Code 1:

# Generates an Involute Tooth Gear
class SPGear

	# default values for dialog box
	@@teeth = 15
	@@ang_pressure = 20.0  # degrees
	@@rad_pitch = 10.0.inch
	@@face_width = 3.0
	@@ang_helix = 0.0
	@@ang_bevel = 0.0

Change To:

# Generates an Involute Tooth Gear
class SPGear

	# default values for dialog box
	@@teeth = 15
	@@ang_pressure = 20.0  # degrees
	@@rad_pitch = 10.0.to_f.to_l
	@@face_width = 3.0.to_f.to_l
	@@ang_helix = 0.0
	@@ang_bevel = 0.0

Select Code 2:

		@teeth = teeth.abs
		@ang_pressure = ang_pressure.degrees
		@rad_pitch = rad_pitch.to_f
		@face_width = face_width.to_f
		@ang_helix = ang_helix
		@ang_bevel = ang_bevel.degrees

Change To:

		@teeth = teeth.abs
		@ang_pressure = ang_pressure.degrees
		@rad_pitch = rad_pitch.to_f.to_l
		@face_width = face_width.to_f.to_l
		@ang_helix = ang_helix
		@ang_bevel = ang_bevel.degrees

nanolin

As used for a reduction? . as those used in printers Prussian
Thank you

jumpjack

Has this plugin been updated? Does it support worms too now?
It would be also amazing if it supported Sketchy Physics...

pilou

@unknownuser said:

It would be also amazing if it supported Sketchy Physics

Why it does not ?
Just make Components or Groups with your gears and you can use SketchyPhysics for anything!

jumpjack

It would take years to make each single part of a gear & worm sketchy-compatible.
It would take 2 seconds using a script.