Spent the better part of yesterday getting this gear right (I hope). It is a 24 tooth bevel gear 22.5 mm diam (drawn in centimetres). Gear E in my diagram above.

SPGears created a fairly close model. I had to compare that model to my desired cross section and manipulate it into shape.
I had to get rid of the overhangs on each tooth to avoid any supports. That was the tedious part. (I'll show how later today)

Thankfully SPGears creates each tooth as a circular array of one tooth, so editing is relatively easy.

Then I had to make a single generic hub as the 5 gears, plus the other smaller gear (scaled down a bit) have different hubs. That part was far easier.

An SPGear is actually a group of 2 nested groups, the set of teeth, and the hub, done in a strange way, but hey, it works. I made it a component of the 2 nested groups.

To make sure the gears mesh correctly (fingers crossed) I duplicated the SPGear and turned it 90 deg. I drew an axial line to the vertex within the component for alignment purposes. I then turned it 90 degrees and mated them at the vertex. I also rotated the vertical gear 7.5 deg (24 teeth) to properly mesh the 2 gears. That resulted in a large gap between teeth.

By eye I moved the vertical gear along blue and red axis (equally) till I got a nice mesh with a bit of play. Then adjusted (shortened) the vertex end of the axial line accordingly.

There were tiny overlaps.
So I had to scale the 2 face ends of the teeth a bit to clean up the mesh. Only after all that was I able to redraw the large end to eliminate the overhangs.

I cannot yet print a pair to test as I do not yet have a printer (long story, and it's not the $$$)

Later.......

@alexpacio2013
Thanks. I know what you mean to be retired and have "plenty" of time on your hands. Even so, I have been working on this concept for over 7 years and the model to prove it will work for about 4 years now. Plenty of time but plenty of distractions as well.

My model design is complete, except for the actual gears design and some final wire routing.

However, if you have expertise in trigonometry and Excel I could use some help in some spreadsheets I cannot wrap my head around.
The main spreadsheet is a simulation of the model both for proof of concept, animated demonstration/presentation and design of some part sizes for a real life-sized device.

I would need you to commit to an NDA to bring you on board, as I have about 7 patents to reveal for you to help me..

@alexpacio2013
Thanks, but there is nothing about my model that has predefined printed parts. Other than motors, screws, bearings and some electrical parts, all of it is a unique design.
I have visited this site before and it has a lot of neat stuff, but nothing appropriate to my model.

Thanks for the reply.

I will be open (to a limited extent) about the model I need to build. Can't show all due to patent reasons.

I am using a Centimetre Drawing unit which will translate to Millimetres when printed on a Snapmaker A350 (when I get it).
It has a print resolution of .05mm in XY and .12mm in Z axis. So my minimum line segment length has to be .05mm or greater.
So drawing in Centimetres or Meters makes little difference, except I can mentally visualize in Centimetres better.

The actual dimensions of the gears are determined by several factors, but can vary a bit (1 or 2 mm) if and as needed. However the ratios are firm.

All are bevel gears, ranging in size from (about) 20mm (printed), 25mm, 50mm, 140mm and 280mm (see drawing). I usually go by outside diameter rather than pitch diameter, but I can adjust to one or the other if needed.

There are 6 types of gears, A to F.
A - About 50 mm diam printed. There are several of these same gears, but I only show 2. The tooth count really does not matter and I will adjust as needed.
B - The Main ring gear is about 280 mm diam meshing to gear A. Again, tooth count really does not matter but MUST be an even count.
C - MUST be the same diameter and tooth count as A, but the bevel angle is different. There is only 1 in the model.
D - Is a smaller ring gear meshed only to gear C. The diameter and tooth count MUST be EXACTLY 1/2 that of gear B. (140 mm diameter) This is critical.
E - Is a "standard" 45 degree bevel gear, about 25 mm diameter and no specific tooth count, but not too fine. There are 5 of these same gears forming a differential.

  *Ignore the unlabelled gear to its left. That is a whole other problem to solve. It is a worm gear with diam and tooth count to be determined by some complex math once these other gears are known as well as other factors.*

F - Are also 45 deg bevel gears, same as gear E but smaller, about 20 mm diameter. There are 6 in the model.

So the 2 really difficult gears to design are gears B and D in order to mesh properly with gears A and C respectfully..
FYI; Gears A, C and E are connected with concentric shafts and form the 50% RPM reduction needed between gear A and C.

When I first started SPGears, I created a 45 deg bevel gear with some arbitrary values, as I still do not full understand its dialog box.

I played around a bit to figure what it was made of; (lots of components) then simplified it to a solid and removed unnecessary soft lines.

But it also produced gear teeth with lots of tiny overhangs (in red) where a lot of work will be necessary to remove support material. I will modify the single gear tooth component to eliminate that overhang.

I would appreciate if you could fully explain the SPGears dialog box as some of the terms are not reflected in other documentation.

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?

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

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

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

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

OK, I'll try meters next 3D printed model.
Again, thanks for the help and advice.

jgb

Dave,
Thanks again. I never knew about using "tab" in Solid Inspector 2. And when I tried it on your first suggestion, I did it wrong.

It took 2 minutes to solidify both components using tab in SI-2.

That would have saved me a lot of time and hair if I had known it before.
Now I can go back and solidify some other "non-solid" models.

Next model I will try using meters instead of centimetres. Just that 10:1 is easier to work with than 100:1 as I have to visualize the model against a ruler to get some sizing correct.

Alternatively, just open the group or component and activate the tool. Saves you from jumping in and out of the object while editing.

Doesn't work for me. What am I missing here?

jgb

@Dave-R

I normally make front/back faces the same, as colour differences show up along edges.

Solid Inspector correctly orients the faces. Yes, in some cases I will temporarily change color on one of a pair of faces to easily see interference's and holes, but when fixed, they go back to a solid colour.

But when I am in the throes of design I keep the part in default "no" colour both sides and if needed, just colour the component as a whole.

When I went back to the model, I cannot see any difference in front/back face colours. How did you see that? How can I fix that?

jgb

@Dave-R

Thank you Dave. That helped a lot to clean up the parts.

However, not the problems I posted.

Solid Inspector never flagged those "overlapped circle" edges, and I never noticed them either. I was looking for red edges.

"Tab" doesn't work in SU 2015, but I'll keep tat in mind when I finally upgrade to SU-2025/26 and a 64 bit PC.

As for model scaling, I draw in centimetres, print in millimetres (10:1).

Any idea on the surface borders and internal face edges?

jgb

It's been a while since I visited this space, and things sure are different.

I was away from Sketchup for over a year and 1/2, but got back to design a prototype model to 3D print. Still with SU 2015 as my PC is still 32 bit.

It all came back to me, but this complex part simply will not go solid. It did at first but I made complex change and now it won't.

SOLID INSPECTOR 2 (which is really great) reports 3 surface borders and 3 internal face edges, but I cannot see any red whatsoever. I use x-ray, scaled up 10 times, close in inspection, but nada. Can't find any red.

I have 2 nearly identical models but both report the same problem.

I need a more experienced set of eyes or better tools to find them for me.

Please, do not fix it for me. Just show me where the problems are.
Swing Table - Lower - with problems.skp
Thanks, jgb

Rich

I tried copying the text of one layer, deleted it, then as you said, Paste-in-place.
I then grouped it with some other text (the screws) and made its layer "DOC"

Then I moved the camera, and all the text moved.

So, not really worth spending a lot of time on. I'll just add a Layer specific to each text block, and show it as needed.

Thanks again.

For some reason I am NOT getting notifications when somebody posts a reply.
I DO have "Notify me when a reply is posted" ticked on.
And yes, my email is correct in account settings.
Sorry I took so long to see your replies.

Anyway, Jean, Bonjour. My SU does not seem to have that dialog box. It is Ver 2015.

Rich, Thanks, I'll try it later in the week when I get a big file saved and cleared.

Anybody????

Yes still with 2015. Haven't upgraded PC to 64 bit.
Anyway, that worked except for what I'm trying to do.

I document some of my drawing layers with free floating text, ie: text without a leader, not pointing to an object.

I usually put it in the upper left corner, and it stays put however I pan or orbit around.
In some cases I will assign the relevant layer to that text so it is only visible when that layer is visible.

But now I need to do something a bit different. Stack a bunch of texts but in a group so I can layer that group (ie: DOC) so they only are visible if both layer DOC and that layer is visible.

The problem is stacking the individual texts in the same spot, because when I tried to do this, they are in different XYZ locations and only seem to be properly stacked from a specific camera angle.

And if I make them a grouped component, and select face camera, they do face camera, but move around as I pan or orbit.

I've attached the .SKP file. It is a set of modifications to an old table saw I have.
If you select layers 2 or 4 or 5 or DOC then pan or orbit, you will see what I mean.
Table Saw Mods

Embarrassed to ask. But it has been a lot of years since I did this.
How do I set "always face camera"?
Can't find the command nor is "F1 help" any help.

First, the lay of the land.

I have SU 2015, buddy has SU-8. Ignoring why neither of us will upgrade, here's the problem.
I created a model in SU 2015, saved in SU-8 format and emailed it as an attachment to him.
I am on a Yahoo ISP, he is on Gmail.

When it arrived, NO ATTACHMENT, not even the ref. to an attachment.

But JPG and MP4 get through no problem. I even tried renaming the ext. to JPG or MP4, same thing. Attachment stripped away. I even sent it from my Gmail account to his. Nada.

I then sent it as a SKP attachment to his other ISP Yahoo, and it got through, but won't load.

So, 2 things to puzzle out.

1. Is Google stripping away SU files in its emails, maybe in spite that Trimbel now owns it?

2. Why won't a converted SU 2015 file to SU-8 load? Is Su 2015 to SU-8 faulty?

I can't use warehouse. It won't accept 2015 files.

Any other ideas??