Gear Software

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

Is there a piece of software that lets you create gears of various sizes and pitch then output a vector drawing?

[Doug Griffith]

I know of a few but neither are anywhere near cheap, Vectorworks and Geartrax for SolidWorks. You can draw your own but it isn't for the light hearted. You can find formulas online. If you need a specific spur gear, let me know. I should be able to help you out.

Cheers,
Doug

[David Fairfield]

You can use the star tool in Adobe Illustrator to draw gears very precisely and easily. Use the round corners filter to smooth the points.

Dave

[Scott Challoner]

Allycad is free and can make gears. Someone on the Creek posted this a while back. Hope it helps.

[Tony Joyce]

Try here -
http://www.forestmoon.com/software/GearDXF/

Tony Joyce

[Doug Griffith]

You can use the star tool in Adobe Illustrator to draw gears very precisely and easily. Use the round corners filter to smooth the points.

Dave

I think what you're talking about would create decorative gears... not spur gears with pitch or pressure angles.

Allycad makes gears... cool.

[Doug Griffith]

Try here -
http://www.forestmoon.com/software/GearDXF/

Tony Joyce

That's cool too!

[Dave Johnson29]

Is there a piece of software that lets you create gears of various sizes and pitch then output a vector drawing?

Do you want real gears or just images that look like gears?

A BIG difference.

[Tony Joyce]

This is an online gear generator -with HPGL output
http://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html

Tony Joyce

[Tony Joyce]

Or if you want to get real fancy and generate G-code & don't mind paying!
http://www.realhamradio.com/gearhome.htm

Tony Joyce

[Doug Griffith]

This is an online gear generator -with HPGL output
http://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html

Tony Joyce

This is a great tool. Thanks. I clicked a few links on the page and found something that tickles my gray matter. Now I know what I'm going to do in my golden years... make Marble Machines.

http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/marbles/index.html

[Tony Joyce]

Or you could just cut them on a table saw using this guys method.
http://steveg769.bizland.com/id5.html

also be sure and check this page out.
http://steveg769.bizland.com/id13.html


Tony Joyce

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

I would be willing to pay for the Gear-Wheel Designer if I could design the cutout to attach to various servo shafts.

[David Fairfield]

I think what you're talking about would create decorative gears... not spur gears with pitch or pressure angles.

Allycad makes gears... cool.

You're right, Doug. But you can change the contours on one tooth, and use cut/ paste/ rotate / copy / expand. You can draw the gear you want in Adobe, if you already have the specs.

Whatever program you use, don't forget to compensate for kerf.

Dave

[Doug Griffith]

Once you have the teeth and centerpoint in vector format, you can draw up any attachment you need in something like CorelDraw.

Speaking of gears, attached are a few pics of a project I'm doing. What you see are CNC toolpaths for tooling to vacuum form a gear. The gear is 14" across and is part of a much larger planetary gear system. I just machined it out of wood which took about 8 hours. Now its off to the foundry to be cast out of aluminum.

Cheers,
Doug

[James Aldrich]

Inkscape 0.46 (freeware) has a gear generator. Under Effects--Render---Gear. It allows you to set (Number of Teeth - Circle pitch, px - Pressure angle). Attached is a screen shot of the settings and a sample of the gears. I imported into CD x3 and changed the gears to 2pt so they can be seen easier. I save the gears as an .eps file in Inkscape and import in CorelDraw, change to Hairline and cut.
Jim

[James Aldrich]

Sorry I forgot the picture
Jim

[Michael Hunter]

I needed to draw gears for my wooden clock. I spent ages researching how to do it, and found the same thing with many so-called gear design formulae - you needed to know the "module" before you could work out the gear shape and you couldn't work out the module without knowing the final shape of the gears - a real chicken-and-egg job.

I ended up with enough understanding of involute gears that I was able to work out a way of drawing them without recourse to the "module" at all. It is a bit long-winded, but works out OK and I now have a whole family of gear sizes which work on sensible (metric) centres.

If anyone is interested, I'll write up my "method", but it won't be for a few weeks 'cos I'm very busy just now.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

Thanks guys I purchased a copy of involute. It has the basic options plus a whole lot more. The only down side is that they should have included a tutorial it has a lot of options and the help just gives basic information on each parameter.

All the other programs you listed worked as well. I just wish there was a book on basic gear making so I could understand a lot of the terms as well as the do's and don'ts.

[James Stokes]

If you find a drafting book on mechanical drafting it will tell you everything you want to know about drawing gears.