Best printer for gears and maybe camshafts?

[TimM]

I am designing an elaborate steampunk mechanical marvel. I originally planned to buy used gears on eBay, but the selection was limited and the prices outrageous. Now I plan to buy a 3D printer to make functional gears and possibly camshafts. I've read your and other reviews and have narrowed my choices to Zortrax M200 (my tentative favorite), MakerGear M2 (second choice) and Lultzbot TAZ5 (which has a few very bad reviews along with its many good reviews). I have no problem spending $2000, but I want a solid machine which I can later use for other serious hobby apps. Does anyone have comments or suggestions on my choice? Thanks!

[kyogjj]

Do you have requirements for material?
If not, you needn't buy expensive machines. Some 3D printers under $1000 also can work well.
Such as http://www.wercan.com/xyzprinting-da...er-p-6143.html
Hope it can help you.

[Sebastian Finke]

They're all good printers, however be aware that Zortraz uses proprietry filament.

[curious aardvark]

well if you want properly strong parts - look at the markforged - probably a bit too pricey.

Other than that - hell any fdm machine will do pretty much exactly the same as any other. Some take more tweaking than others.

There are so many: which is best printer thread - just wade through a few of those.

[YosemiteSam]

If it would help you making a decision, I can print some gears with my Zortrax M200 and put pictures here.

[TimM]

YosemitySam - Wow, that's very generous of you! I don't really need that, though. What I am more interested in is how you design your gears. Do you use commercial software? Shareware? Laboriously design each gear manually? I just posted a message in another section asking for advice on how I can most easily make specific gears (i.e. 2" diameter with 48 teeth, etc.). Thanks!

[Sebastian Finke]

Here are two items I designed in Geomagic Design and printed on my Flashforge Creator X (using HIPS). One is a helical gear, the other an impeller...

[YosemiteSam]

YosemitySam - Wow, that's very generous of you! I don't really need that, though. What I am more interested in is how you design your gears. Do you use commercial software? Shareware? Laboriously design each gear manually? I just posted a message in another section asking for advice on how I can most easily make specific gears (i.e. 2" diameter with 48 teeth, etc.). Thanks!

I mostly deal with module spur gears, but SolidWorks which I use to design them also allows me to create some other basic gear types. It is very simple and time efficient, just set some basic parameters and you have a gear.

[Roxy]

Wow! I made a post and it looks like it never happened. My suggestion was to download OpenScad and then go to http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3575 and get the parametric_involute_gear_v5.0.scad file. It can even make Herringbone gears. This is the module that most of the RepRap's use to make their gears. You get to specify everything.

[TimM]

Roxy - Thank you! I am convinced. Because I am a programmer by profession, I particularly love the 'programming' approach taken by OpenSCAD. My only (likely minor) issue now is that I am not a mechanical professional, just a hobbyist who wants to make some gears for a mechanical gizmo. In that gear code, parameters like 'number_of_teeth' are obvious. But things like 'circular pitch' and 'circles' are meaningless to me. So I've got to find a good reference for these values, especially in the context of the gear code. I ran into numerous threads in which people were guessing and getting weird results. There seems to be a lot of confusion about size units et cetera. I used a text editor to study the gear code and I didn't see any embedded documentation or supplemental doc files. If anyone can direct me to a link where these terms will be explained, I'd be most grateful.