Can any body suggest places to look for a replacement gear like this, or an easy way to make a few?
My dad says the OEM wants waaaay too much for them.
And it seems that the teeth are probably too small for the Polyprinters…
There is an option if you have the time. Mold the existing gear, but it to repair the teeth damage. Then cast it in resin or make it out of metal in the foundry.
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I think there’s also a tool where you can specify the number of teeth and size of the gear to get a 3d model. You could then print it, I don’t recall the name of the software though.
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yes I’ve heard of it, haven’t seen it though. somebody was saying these teeth are too small for the DMS printers. but surely there are higher resolution printing services out there. it’s just that beyond a certain level of effort, it makes more sense to just pick up OEM gears…
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I think we had that software on the laser computer in the old space for cutting gears.
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here’s an online gear generator
You can download the svg, and from there import and make it 3d, but you’d have to do each tier of the gear. After you get those, you can put them together. Honestly… try printing the gear first. Worst that could happen is it not work. Best, you’d have a gear you can mold/cast and reproduce.
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I have a copy of gearotic
Thanks,
Alyssa
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Hi, Carl.
That does look relatively printable.
One trick you can do to get finer details, at the cost of longer
printing time, is to make a Style with a smaller path width. This will
give help, even though the nozzle is not actually that small.
Once you get the STL set up (if you learn a bit of Open SCAD you can
generate and stack two gears in there, I’m sure) cut just a small
section of it using NetFabb, enough for say 10 teeth, and then print
it with regular settings first. If they are well-formed, you don’t
need to do anything. But if not, you can try reducing the path width
to e.g. .20mm (and you can see even before printing the effect of
that, using the “Paths” display).
If you are new to 3D printing, it may take a bit of learning and
advice to get to that point.
You may also need to test-print to get the correct inside hole diameter.
It looks like the gear was originally Nylon, or at least something
probably tougher than ABS. You could try ABS just to see if it’s going
to work at all. But it’s possible to print in Taulman Nylon 618 (that
what I would recommend for that gear) and get something stronger. It
requires some special Material settings so if you get that far, please
post a message here or send an email to [email protected]
Ed
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