Software for gear design?

[TimM]

I plan to buy a 3D printer and software (if needed) to build a large variety of gears, about 1/2" to 4" diameter with variable number of teeth. I see a few fixed gear patterns here and elsewhere, but I need to be able to specify an exact number of teeth and size. (This is for low-load applications.) Is there any reasonably priced software for creating such patterns? Thanks!

[Sebastian Finke]

Cubify ($50-$200) or Geomagic Design ($3000) as CAD package and Wizoscript (free) to create the gears. Couldn't be easier.

[TimM]

Thanks for the info! $3000 is way beyond my budget, as I am retired and doing this as a hobby. I'll research Cubify on my own, but I'll ask you, does Cubify have a relatively simple method for designing specific gears (such as telling it I want a 2" diameter gear with 48 teeth) or does the user have to manually and laboriously draw each desired gear? Thanks!

[Sebastian Finke]

That's where wizoscript comes in. It generates scripts that create gear to your specification. Here is a link to their website: Wizotools. I've played around with it. If you have your gears specs your can create a gear in less than a minute.

Cubify is basically an extremely simplified version of Geomagic Design. But it is fully parametric which alone makes it worth the money. Give the trial a go and visit the Geomagic Design Forums if you need any help. Cubify Design may be more your thing if you want to create assemblies and drawings. Invent only does parts.

[Roxy]

I plan to buy a 3D printer and software (if needed) to build a large variety of gears, about 1/2" to 4" diameter with variable number of teeth. I see a few fixed gear patterns here and elsewhere, but I need to be able to specify an exact number of teeth and size. (This is for low-load applications.) Is there any reasonably priced software for creating such patterns? Thanks!

Before you buy anything, down load OpenScad and check out this file: parametric_involute_gear_v5.0.scad If you go to Thingiverse you can see some good examples of that library being used. Pretty much, the RepRap printers use that module to make their gears. It can even make Herringbone gears! But regardless of the type of gear you want to make, you get to specify everything from the size of this and that to the number of teeth on the gear.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3575/#files

[TimM]

Thank you! Those gears are beautiful. I'll check out OpenScad and that file.
Tim

[Bassna]

I love how he threw out a $3000 software program to make simple gears. Lol

[curious aardvark]

openscad - hands down.

Write one parametric script and make any size and teeth number just be changing a couple of numbers.

(looks up the page)
yeah basically what roxy said :-)

[TimM]

OpenSCAD looks ideal for me, as I am a (semi-retired) computer programmer. The coding approach looks great. I found the MCAD library, which includes modules for involute gears. Now that I see that making varied gears should be easy, I'm going to start working on my designs and then order a 3D printer. Thanks for all the help!

[curious aardvark]

Yeah it's a great program.
I was never much of a programmer - but even my 'bodge-it-and-see' approach works :-)