# 3DPrintBoardPro > 3D Services Available / Needed > [NEEDED] I need two tiny gears

## Tonyj

Hi,

At this time I am not sure if a 3D printer can print a gear this small, seen in the picture below. I say this because I already talk to three 3D printer people and they all said that their printer can not print a quality looking gear that small. Could it be that they do not have a good enough printer or is it impossible for a 3D printer to print something this small?

tiremotor.jpg

I need a gear that just fits inside that black tire and another gear that fits on the silver motor that is big enough to touch the tire gear. Note that I need the teeth of these gears to be deeper than a servo gear or the gears will pop out when the motor runs. In other words, I need a little play for the wheel axle.

I hope someone can answer my question above or be able to put these two gears together for me. If someone is able to make two gears to work on my product, I will then need more of those gears made up afterwards. 

I can take more pictures if this can be done and someone is willing to take this project on.

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

got a millimetre scale - I don't do inches :-) 

And you'll need someone with a resin based sla type printer. 

They will be able to make the gears - but I don't know how strong they will be.

Okay after guesstimateing it at about 5/16 of an inch it's around 8mm in real numbers. 

I actually just see wheels, no gears. 8mm wheels - no problem.

8mm gears with many teeth - you will need sla machine.

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## Tonyj

Thank you curious aardvark for your quick reply and answering my question!

Now I need to find a person with a sla 3D printing machine to make this happen. Anyone out there have one and is willing to help me with this? I have Paypal.

Note that I do not need many teeth. Just not small teeth like a servo gear teeth. Here is an image of the closest gear I seen made to make this work. I like the size of these teeth.

smallgear.jpg

When the 3D person tried to make this gear smaller, it messed up. I need this made at a smaller size and a smaller middle hole of course. If teeth are going to be a problem, then maybe even a custom paddle setup. 

Thanks,
Tony

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## Mjolinor

I think you may have more luck with a laser cutter though it does depend what strength you need.

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## Tonyj

I was hoping for plastic gears. It is for a micro RC car.

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## Mjolinor

> I was hoping for plastic gears. It is for a micro RC car.


Not really understanding your reply. Do you think that laser cutters will not cut plastic?

My opinion is that you could cut what you want out of acrylic sheet with a laser cutter more easily than you could print what you need with a 3d printer.

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## Tonyj

Yeah, I read your reply wrong. I see where you are coming from now. Yeah, custom laser cutting could be another way to go to make these gears. 

I just watch a laser cutting machine on youtube. That is awesome!

Thanks for the tip! But will it cost me more going this way? I just look at a website about this and they said they charge $60.00 hour to make your design to laser cut. Ouch! Of course I can look at other Laser cutting services to see what they charge. That was just my first one I look at so far.

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

how long do you think it will take to laser cut a couple tiny gears ? 
seconds. 

And you're still in inches. You haven't even lined the rule up with the tip of the bottom gear. 

Aaarrggh. 

Do you have  a set of digital calipers ? 

If so give me overall diameter, thickness and the diameter of the central hole. 
With fewer teeth I don't actually see a huge problem. 
I've printed smaller things.
The trick is to print several at once.

I can knock out a parametric gear file in openscad, no probllem. 
But not without proper measurements.

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## Tonyj

I do not have any digital calipers. My job has some. Give me a few days to get the sizes for you. 

Do you live in the USA? 

Thanks,
Tony

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## Tonyj

Here are two more pictures. This time it is in MM size. Will this help any? The shaft hole can just be a tiny hole in the middle. I can drill the right size hole as long as I have a hole to work off of to get the middle of it. The thickness of the gear would be thin. Maybe the second image can help the thickness.

mm1.jpg

mm2.jpg

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## Mjolinor

I am sure that someone would cut those gears for you on a laser cutter. You are talking maybe 25 seconds cutting time and about 10 cents worth of plastic. You need to find a laser cutter forum or a makerspace that has one, there are thousands, these laser cutters are only a few hundred dollars now, cheaper than 3d printers.

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## Tonyj

You guys are great on your support here. Did not know I was going to do all this talking about this in just one day. Wow!

The cost comes in on the designing of your product into the computer for the laser or 3D printer to make. But you would think most people would already have some kind of gear design to work off of to save me some money. Yeah, it should not cost much at all for the material to make this at this tiny size.

Tony

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## Mjolinor

You could easily design what you want yourself.

Download openscad (preferred) or freecad (second choice) and install the gear plugins that people have written and that is all you need. You will feel a lot better about it having done it yourself too.

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## curious aardvark

yeah yeah - I'll have a go, and no I live in the uk. 

But I like a challenge :-) 

But you really need to start thinking in measurements. I mean: how thick - your answer: 'thin'. 
lol that doesn't really help. 

I can print from 0.1mm on up. parts that are 2mm thick are actually surprisingly strong. 
I can also print - for something that small -  in carbon fibre reinforced nylon. Not sure if it would be rigid enough, but by god it'd take a long time to wear it out :-) 

I'll go look at the pics next to  a proper rule ;-)

So I make those wheels  about 6mm in diameter - but I still can't see any gear teeth ?

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## Tonyj

Curious aardvark, thank you for taking this on. But I did not know you were from UK.  I was hoping to find some one here in the USA for I do not have to mess with shipping over seas. Is this forum from UK? I search USA 3D printing forum and this one came up first.

You did bring up a good point about getting the right measurements for people know what they have to put together, than trying to figure it out in that picture. I was thinking about making two circles with my word program that would be the right over all size of the two gears. In other words, print out paper gears that are the sizes I need made up. Then let people know what I need done.

I have already emailed some people for help. But I have yet heard back from them.

I like your effort you are putting in to this for me, but I rather work with someone in the usa, because I am going to need more gears if these two gears work first. That would be to much shipping over seas. 

Thanks thou!
Tony

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## Tonyj

Hey Curious aardvark, this just pop in my head. Did you plan on just making the FILE of the gears I need for me to help me out? If so, then there would be no shipping.  :Smile:  Then I can give that file to a person in USA to print out, if their printer is good enough.


Thanks,
Tony

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## Tonyj

Mjolinor, a laser cutting service just got back with me about my gears. They also said it would be a good idea for me to design my own gears and then give them the file to laser cut the gears. They said the minimum order is $25.00 that would give me a patch of gears made up for me, if I have a design already made up for them.

They said "geargenerator.com" could be a good place to start to build your own gear design. I have yet been there. I am going to it after I post this reply.

Bad news is that they said they are not sure how well they will come out at this tiny size. I still have yet had some one straight out tell me that they CAN 3D print or laser cut any thing this small. Hmm..

I would hate to pay $25.00 for something that will not work. I will keep looking I guess.

I want to thank you two for all your advice you been giving me. Means a LOT! I will get these gears made up some day.  :Smile: 

Thanks,
Tony

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## Mjolinor

This is a good example of how finely you can cut with a laser cutter.

http://imgur.com/a/MUNUB

The main part of the  tower is made from 8 flat panels, each diagonal brace is 0.5 mm thick.

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## curious aardvark

> . I still have yet had some one straight out tell me that they CAN 3D print or laser cut any thing this small. Hmm..


maybe because you've yet to actually tell anyone exactly what size you need :-) 
The problem is at your end - not anyone elses.

were you to say something like: 'I need gears with 6 teeth, 6mm diameter and 2 mm thick with a 1mm hole through the middle. 
Then I suspect you'd get a lot more replies :-) 

This is an international forum, people here from all over the world :-) 

Okay as I'm a nice guy here's a quick openscad script I just done that makes gears.




> // CA's mini gears
> $fn=100;
> 
> nt=8; // number of teeth
> tt=1.2; // width of gear teeth
> lt=1.5; // length of gear teeth
> gd=6; // overall gear diameter
> gt=1; // gear thickness
> ch=1; // centre hole size
> ...


Copy and paste everything in the quote window into openscad and press f5 to see a quick render and f6 to render for export. Can be exported as .stl, off, amf, dxg etc
All numbers are in millimetres. 

Changing the numbers at the top changes exactly what it says to the right of the number :-)

Picture of gear with settings currently in script:
small gear.jpg

Work out what size gear you want. Find out what format the laser cutter people or whoever want it in. generate it, export it and viola - job done.
It might need tweaking, let me know if a particular set of numbers does something weird.
I tend to wing the maths and just fettle till it does what i want it to, by which time I generally have no idea how I got there :-) 

And just for a laugh, when my current print is done I'll try and see just how small a gear I can print :-)

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## Tonyj

Curious aardvark, what I said was not for this forum. It was for the other people that already got with me about it before I came here. They already had a good idea how small this gear was going to be with out me giving them a design. Then I just got that Laser guy saying that they are not sure how it will come out. To me it seems like they should know what their machine can or can not do. That is all I was trying to say. 

It is all good my friend. But I fully understand having a design for them will for sure point them in the right direction. With that said, thank you for putting this together for me. I will take a look at it.

Yeah, take a picture of that gear you print out and share it with us on here. I would like to see it.

Mjolinor, that is a cool looking tower made by a Laser cutter. Wow!

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

gears on hold - currently adapting coffee pod holder to use bamboo skewers rather than metal skewers. I can cut the bamboo with small wire clippers. I have to use big arse bolt cutters for the stainless skewers.  Surprisingly hard metal for real cheap skewers.

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## Tonyj

No problem. Good luck with that project.

My last 3D printer guy gave me his first gear he tried to print out for the motor shaft. I have to say that it is the perfect size. Problem with it is the teeth. Did not print that well at that size. But after looking at it, I feel he printed it out with to many teeth (26 teeth). That would be hard for a 3D printer to print that many teeth on a tiny gear. I would have not gone over 12 teeth. 12 or 14 max.

Any way, when I get around to it I will post up a picture of this gear. This gear has the diameter size that I want for the motor. Also I know what size I want for the tire gear too. I will have pictures on here some day to show you guys what you think.

Later,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

lmao just printed 4 gears so small it's ridiculous. 
Picked one up and promptly lost it.

fortunately my camera has a very good macro mode.

probably be better to drop the middle hole from 1.5mm to 1mm. 

I have to admit I did not think these would come out anywhere as good as this :-)

tinygear3.jpg

tinygear2_597x600.jpg

tinygear4_714x600.jpg

They are only 1mm thick. with a 1.5mm centre hole - and even that's a pretty good hexagonal shape - I figured it would just be round. Nope made a damn good attempt at a hexagon. 
Make them 2mm thick and they'd be pretty tough.

lol, maybe not up to the detail you get with sla - but damn I'm impressed what this old girl can do :-)

makerbot really knew what they were doing when they designed the replicator dual and whatever flashforge did can't have hurt :-) 

Going to see if I can get a pic of them on my fingertip, could lose them lol

tinygear5_615x600.jpg

hee hee, anyone got any other daft things to print ?

tinygear6_800x600.jpg

Come on that's bloody impressive from a printer you can pick up these days for under £300

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## Mjolinor

Personally I think it made a better job of a pentagon than a hexagon but hey, at your age with your eyes what else can we expect.  :Smile: 

Hexagon or pentagon it is damned impressive.

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## Tonyj

Wow! That is small! Nice work! 

I think that would fit just inside the tire or right on the tire. Very close. If I ever get around taking pictures of what I have in front of me, it will give a great picture on what I need.

Yeah, the hole size would have to be smaller. Do you think it might need 2 or 3 more teeth, to make sure it catches the other gear all the time?

All and all, that came out nice! Thanks for sharing. Well done!

Tony

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## curious aardvark

I reckon I go up to 8 teeth, make them slightly larger and get away with it.

My main limitation is the fact that I can only extrude a 0.4mm wide bead. 
So for practical purposes 0.8m is the thinnest tooth I can get away with that would be strong enough to actually be functional.
That said if I used the MYmat carbon fibre reinforced nylon, you might be able to go down to a 0.4mm wide tooth. 

With more teeth you lose the gap between them as you go towards the hub, so while you get more teeth, the part that engages the other gears gets shorter. 

These are surprisingly tough. I did squash one, but it took  a fair bit of pressure.

I had no idea I could print stuff this small. 

makes you think an fdm 3d printed wristwatch could be done. But not by me lol

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## curious aardvark

Okay at that size, 7 teeth and 1.2mm teeth width is my maximum, any narrower and they won't slice, any more teeth and you don't have enough to engage another gear.  Also made them marginally wider and 2mm thick.

7teethmini.jpg

7teethmini2_607x600.jpg

7teethmini3_646x600.jpg

1mm hole. And these I can't crunch between 2 fingers. 2mm pla is proper strong :-)

need to change the outer layers from 1 to 2, that'd bond the middle more to the 'legs'.

But I tell you as they stand - these would work !

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## Tonyj

I like that amount of teeth. Yeah, I think that would work too. 

Can the middle hole be smaller or is that the smallest you can go?

I have to leave to cut a person lawn. I will try to get some pictures up for you. I know the perfect gear size for the motor shaft.

Thanks again for all that you are doing. 

Tony

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## Mjolinor

I think it would be a lot better with no hole in the centre and drill it afterwards.

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## Tonyj

Mjolinor, I am good with drilling the hole myself. But I need something in the middle to show me where to drill a hole. If I am off, that gear will be no good.

Just got back from cutting grass. Now I am going to eat. After that I will look at taking those pictures and get them up on here.

Later,
Tony

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## Tonyj

Ok, here is the main picture again of what I need two gears for.

mm1.jpg

Now here is a picture of just the tire. I need a gear that will just fit in this tire. curious aardvark already nailed it for a gear to just fit in this tire. After looking at the shaft for this tire in this picture above, I think curious aardvark middle hole might work the way that it is. The smaller hole in the middle would be for the motor shaft.

tiregear.jpg

Now here is a picture of a gear that is the the perfect diameter size for the motor gear. Note the teeth are way to short! That is why it will not work. This one would need a needle size hole in the middle. 

motorgear.jpg

curious aardvark, i think you got the tire gear done. Do you plain to work on the next gear for the motor to go with your gear you just made for the tire?

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

bear in mind you can always stick a little glue on the shaft and let it dry to give a tighter fit. 

the larger gear - a whole 10mm ! 
That's huge :-) 

I can try for a 0.5mm hole - I suspect it'll just make it easier to see where to drill. 

how about this:

10tooth10mmgear.jpg

Dunno if the gaps between teeth would be wide enough, could always drop it down to 9 teeth. 
These are all made with the gear script I posted - so you could always mess about with it yourself :-)

10teethgear_543x600.jpg

The two mesh quite well. 
10and7gear_800x600.jpg

The little one might need a wee tweak to give it longer teeth/arms.

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## Tonyj

Very nice work! How thick are the gears? Here is a overhead picture of what I want done that kind of shows you how thin I need the gears. Do you think your gears are thin enough to fit on the shafts? Mainly the tire shaft. That is the thinner one. It is a little fuzzy to see.

mm2.jpg

If you can, could you measure the distance from each hole of the gears when they are mesh together to see if it is close to the same distance of my shafts? The picture above also shows the distance between each shaft.

Now I am starting to wounder how much this is going to cost to get these gears ship to me over seas or are you just going to have me pay you for the design work to have some one here in the usa print them out?

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

current distance between centres is 6.2 mm - your's is about 8. so we can make the smaller gear teeth a little longer. 

The gears are 2mm thick. 
The picture is so blurred I have no clue how thick your gears are :-) 

If your camera does not have macro - which it doesn't appear to. then take the picture from further away so it is actually in focus and crop to the part of the image you want. that will always give you a clearer image.

Buy a set of these : http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Elec...gital+calipers

It'll make life much easier :-) 

Postage wise - these things weigh almost nothing. 4 of the larger ones weigh 0.36 grams.
So throw a padded envelope in and p&p should only be  few dollars. 

I've just been  doing the design for fun - but I keep being told I need to charge people for stuff.
We can sort something out I'm sure :-)

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## Tonyj

When you say make the small gear teeth longer, do you mean make it deeper to keep the diameter of the gear the same that will make the teeth look longer? If so, that will work. I am sure that is what you mean, because if you just make the teeth longer, then the diameter of the gear will be bigger than the tire diameter.

Is your motor gear (bigger gear) the same diameter as my white gear seen in the picture in my other reply? If so, then yes we will have to fix the small gear.

As for the thickness, here is a picture of my white gear that is perfect in thickness. Would that white gear be 1mm thick? If so, go with that.

thickness.jpg

As for the money, we can talk about that in PM. I am good for paying you something for your time/work you put in this and for the amount of gears I want printed out along with the shipping cost. Yeah, these are very light in weight. So like you said, shipping will not cost much.

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

follow my photo taking instructions - that picture shows a white bear in a snowstorm with his eyes closed.

There is nothing indentifiable in it.

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## Tonyj

The white gear is 1mm thick because the gear thickness fits between two lines on the mm side ruler. If you like,  I can double check this with the 3D printer guy that printed it.

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

what machine did he print it on ? 

But yeah now i know what I'm looking at I'd say 1mm. 

Would it matter if they were a little thicker - say 1.2 or 1.4 mm. They would be a lot stronger. 

So what I'm going to try this afternoon is to make some out of mymat nylon. 
Nylon isn't usually much good for precision and small parts. But this mymat stuff is not your normal nylon, if I can make  a useable gear out of carbon fibre reinforced nylon - it might not be stiff enough - but if it is, it'll be damn near industructable :-)

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## curious aardvark

Well I have discovered something about printbite and mymat nylon. 
The one sticks to the other like a limpit on steroids in training for the annual 'who's the world's strongest limpet' competition. 

And given that it's currently 27c in my workshop (yeah the sun came out in england) could take a while to cool down to the point where I might b able to get the bloody things off the plate. 
Hmm, wonder of one of them there freezing sprays might work for situations like this. 
Used to have one in the bottom of my tool box - now I think about it, wonder if it's still there....

nope - Now I think about it, I do vaguely remember playing with it till it was empty.

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## curious aardvark

well printbite is down to 29c and the bloody things are still stuck in what looks like a permament basis. 
Bugger lol

Must add this to the printbite thread. Be bloody careful with mymat nylon.

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## Tonyj

I like how you talk. You are funny even when something is going bad. I hope you are able to get it off. Good luck!

I sent a PM about the thickness..

Tony

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## curious aardvark

well with the aid of another piece of printbite, a hammer and a couple of metal scrapers - they are off. 
It was a good idea, but apparently some things you really don't want to use printbite for :-)

Fortunately it's a very hard surface, so doesn't seem to have taken any harm from the experiment. 

It does mean that my magnetic removeable print surfaces project is going to move up on the endless 'list of things that need to be done'.

As to my attitude - what's the point of getting worked up about things ? 
Fix the problem and move on :-) 

I do have some blue pet (at least i think it's pet) I might be able to make these out of. 
I'll give it a go :-)

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## curious aardvark

right trying out some colorfabb xt - a co-polyester based material. 

Very tough and hard wearing, if it'll print this level of detail it'll be much better than pla.
Nearly as stiff but a lot more hardwearing.

Assuming I can get it off the printbite in one piece lol

well looks good so far. 
Nice looking gears - have to wait for the bed to cool and keep my fingers crossed.

***

lol well  , didn't wait for it to cool but a sharp tap with a strip of printbite and a hammer worked a treat. Two went richocheting around the room before I learnt to keep my hand over them before tapping. 
But these are really really nice and super strong. 
1.36mm thick and I can't bend or break them with my fingers.
I'll drop them down to somewhere between 1-1.2. 

These are the dogs bollocks and no mistake :-) 
petgears1_606x600.jpg

The smooth one is the bottom from the printbite, the rougher one is the top. You'll have to drill your own holes, but the centre is clearly marked.

right I'll redesign the smaller ones and have a go with those.

I'd have been a little concerned with the pla that the teeth might break off - not a chance of that happening with these. This stuff is super tough.

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## curious aardvark

lost another couple lol - this next batch I'll put a bit of leather on top before hitting them.

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## Tonyj

Loving the gears! Looks great! I hope I am not pushing it by asking this question. Would you happen to have this same material in green? Don't get me wrong, blue looks GREAT! But the gears might show a tiny bit below my green platform/base. This way it would blend in a little bit better than blue.

If not, no big deal. I thought it would not hurt to ask. I plan to cover as much as I can with the base. So the gears might not show at all. I am not sure at this time, due to I have not gone that far yet. I wanted to make sure I can get this to work first. Then tackle that next. Just thinking ahead here a little bit.

Thanks,
Tony

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## curious aardvark

I can get some green - at the moment the blue is all I have.

last night I upped the tooth count and shortened the teeth. so the big ones are now 12 teeth and the smaller ones 8. They mesh beautifully, turn smoothly without anoy of the catches I was getting with the 7 toothed gears. 

My only issue is the distance between centres. I'll have to look/squint (lol) at that picture again. 
But if you say one gear is 10mm and one is 6mm - then half the diameter and you've got 8mm between centres, but at the that point the gears are simply touching, not enmeshed. so you either need slightly larger gears or a distance of somewhere between 7-7.5mm
Or it's just not going to work.

***

ps, just had  a look on globalfsd and no green xt, assuming this is xt. The problem is I was given it by a dutch guy in  a hurry at a tct show who just pulled it off a big unmarked reel, and he never actually told me what it was. 
It's definitely not pla or abs - so xt is the only other coloured filament they made back in 2014.

Basically blue is what I've got :-)
I can buy a large reel from their website, but you're the looking at around $60 just for a different colour. If I could find a 10 metre sample it would have been around $7 anyway.

And while this is amazing stuff, it's too expensive to just buy because I might need it in the future.

But can't find anyone selling coloured xt samples.

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## curious aardvark

okay looked at pic again, looks like 7mm between shafts. 

I will now try that out with a couple of pins and some cardboard :-)

bugger won't let me upload video files directly. 

Ah ha avi to gif convertor.

Let's try this:
weird, forum turned it into a jpg. 
Alright let's try this:


That's somewhere between 7 and 7.4 mm between centres. 
The new gears have tiny hole in centre.

The only issue was when the small gear rode up the pin and wasn't lined up. when they're both on the same level. they mesh really well.
These are 1mm thick as well.

Better video clip

http://slinging.org/forum/yabbfiles/.../minigears.avi

That little gif is kind of addictive lol

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## Tonyj

Looks GREAT! Well done! Now we can talk in PM about how we can get these gears to me. Thank You!

Tony

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