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.

[printbus]

parametric_involute_gear_v5.0.scad must be from an openSCAD version beyond the March 2015 one I have running now. Unless it has changed (which I doubt), involute_gears.scad is very hard to grasp, especially when some parameters were "inadvertantly" left scaled by 180/pi.

Tim, if you do want to leverage the involute gears stuff in openSCAD, perhaps my openSCAD source for Greg's Wade extruder herringbone gears will be a helpful resource. I tried to scrub through the previous large and small gear scripts, focusing on trying to make them easier to understand. This in turn might help explain how the involute_gears.scad can be used.

Look for the herringbone_gears_9_47_RevA.scad file as part of this - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:812899

[printbus]

parametric_involute_gear_v5.0.scad must be from an openSCAD version beyond the March 2015 one I have running now...

Nevermind on that. Going back through my notes, I see parametric_involute_gear_v5.0.scad is the original script from thing:3572. The filename was simply truncated down to involute_gears.scad when it was incorporated into the openSCAD MCAD library in 2014.

[printbus]

Going on record to clarify that I'm not a gear engineer either. Just someone who wanted to understand the Greg's Wade gears enough in order to better size the gear spacing on the Greg's Wade extruder body, and likely did some of the same research and head scratching that Tim is going through now. I was quite frustrated by the lack of commenting in the involute gear script, the herringbone gear script, and the overall Greg's Wade extruder script. I won't mention names, but in one of the legacy Thingiverse items involved, a well known hobbyist 3D printer guru states, after being pestered for lack of comments in his files, that users of opensource files shouldn't expect them to be commented. I found that to be a bit appalling.

[Roxy]

I won't mention names, but in one of the legacy Thingiverse items involved, a well known hobbyist 3D printer guru states, after being pestered for lack of comments in his files, that users of opensource files shouldn't expect them to be commented. I found that to be a bit appalling.

I find that horrible too. And I would mention names.

[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!