Any good tutorials on BEVEL gear design in SU?

[jgb]

I need to design several sizes of bevel gears for a working model that will be 3D printed.

Quite frankly, all the design tools I have found are for Excel, Fusion or Solidworks or detailed engineering that now baffle my 80 year old brain.

Are there any good simple tutorials based on Sketchup (2015) that will produce a simple gear tooth profile out there?

The gears range from 16 mm diam to 270 mm diam. All are 90 deg bevel. None subject to strong forces.

Or, I can define each of the 6 different sized gears and someone gear savvy among you could graciously design for me. If so, I'll post here the SU file of the gear train and any other details one might need.

I only need the tooth design. Hopefully the same shape can be used for all 6 gears. The gear hubs I have covered.

Thanks, jgb

[Rich O Brien]

Did you try SPGears?

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[Dave R]

As Rich suggests, SPGears is a good option. If you can use standard bevel gears you might check manufacturers and suppliers for files you can use in SketchUp. For example I got a STEP file for the gear shown here from McMaster-Carr which I imported into SketchUp using the Universal Importer available in the ExtensionStore. The result can easily be modified for the shaft it needs to fit and so on.

Since you are modeling for 3D printing, do the modeling in meters to avoid issues with tiny faces.

Couldn't help but do a little playing while avoiding work I should do.

[jgb]

@Rich-O-Brien
Thanks. Not sure that will work for me in SU 2015. Info says the gears are mainly for SP and may not be OK if 3D printed.
But I will try it later this week.

jgb

[jgb]

@Dave-R
Thanks, but nearly nothing I design has a standard base that I can use. Believe me, I looked.

jgb

[Dave R]

@jgb said in Any good tutorials on BEVEL gear design in SU?:

Info says the gears are mainly for SP and may not be OK if 3D printed.

You can certainly modify the geometry output of SP Gears to make solids suitable for 3D printing.

You could also modify standard gears like the one I showed to make any custom sized gears.

[jgb]

@Dave-R
I'll give it a try.
Thanks

[Dave R]

FWIW, here's what it takes to make a solid object from a gear created by SP Gears.

Solid Gear.mp4

[jgb]

Thanks. It loaded OK, and I made test gears OK. Makes nice looking gears.
I figured out how to reduce the lines count and make it solid.

But now I need to make gears to very specific sizes and my foggy brain cannot interpret the dialog box to do it beyond a simple diameter and tooth count.

Also, it produces gears that will be difficult to print; too many overhangs equates to a lot of tiny supports to be removed, and many line lengths are smaller than the printers print resolution. The gears in your diagrams above are far closer to what I need, but I can tweak the SPGears output for that, given each tooth is a component.

Quite frankly, I do not fully understand gear design, beyond number of teeth, diameter (pitch radius), face width and bevel angle.

I really need some tutorial in understanding the SPGears dialog box, and what "Diametral = xx" means.

I have basically 2 types of 90 degree straight bevel gears to make. One pair of same everything; 25mm diameter 24 teeth (simple) and two sets where the diameter ratios are 50mm:280mm and 50mm:140mm. Those are the hard ones to get properly meshed teeth with SPGears.

I can probably play around to get them to work once I understand SPGears dialog box.
Can you help me with that?