[kentavv]

Likely I am being dense but I am having a heck of a time deciphering the gear section in the Machinery's Handbook. What I would like to do is cut some simple spur gears out of aluminum using a vertical CNC mill. I'm not looking for super precise gears... this is a hobby for me. Looks like it should be pretty straight forward as gears are a circular pattern of a feature pair (the tooth and the valley) but I missing something. Would someone point me to a layman's explanation of gear design or a freebie program that can at least provide the necessary parameters or preferably export a DXF profile?

Thanks

[kentavv]

This is the sort of instruction that I can get my head around. If someone knows of a better way, e.g. one that does not involve the piece-mill generation of the involute curve please share.

http://www.cartertools.com/involute.html

Thanks

[greg b]

Im not quite sure what size gears you are planning to make but they will need to be blanked out and set up properly .When i have mucked around doing this in the past,i have used a horizontal arbour arrangment with a right angle head attached to my vertical mills quill.You will need to use a rotary table or indexing head to accurately space the gear teeth with the correct calculations,I am not sure that you will be able to do this in a cnc vertical mill because if its like mine it does not have the facilities to use a horizontal attachment.However if the gears were big enough and had the right size teeth i guess you could use a small end mill and set up a program that could cut them while the blank is laying down flat.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

wildcat, Try www.sofengsvc.com

[NC Cams]

The HOME SHOP MACHINIST magazine has shown a number of times how to cut a gear using DIY processes, a dividing head and a simple gear cutter blade and a vertical mill. I don't recall which issue but they definitely had some how-to's.

[kenbo0422]

How about a 'tap' with your desired pitch held in a lathe. The gear blank is held onto the tool post, but allowed to spin. The idea is that as the blank is fed into the homemade tap, the tap itself moves the blank around. Feed it until you reach the desired/correct depth into the blank. As the blank turns, the changing angle on the cut from the tap produces a nice gear tooth profile. Probably good enough for most hobby uses.

[NC Cams]

A tap won't wonk - think about it - for aw while. The "lead" of the thread is what will pretty much cut all the teetho off of the gear blank.

YOu'll need to cut each tooth without "lead" in order to make a gear.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

See'n as I spend a lot of my time with gear processing, I'll have to agree with NC Cams. I am a bit extreme for a DIY forum, so bear with me.

The easiest way for a DIY gear cutting expedition is to buy a gear form cutter and mill the gear (hopefully the gear is a simple spur gear) and have some method of indexing the blank to the number of teeth (actually you will mill the gaps).

This can be accomplished on a vertical or horizontal milling machine whether CNC or not. I know, 'cause as I've often mentioned, I'm older than Older Than Dirt. Also, I've dunit.

There are many other ways to accomplish the same thing, but it's like re-inventing the wheel, not really required.

You can buy the cutters on e-bay for peanuts, so why do the wheel thing?

Smile, I'm never very serious It's too painful

[Ken_Shea]

This may be of help to you. The low precision is free to down load.

http://www.hobbing.com/

Look for the horizontal menu bar toward the top of the page, click on the "spur gears"

Ken

[kenbo0422]

Normally I would agree that a tap won't work. The channels are too wide to keep the blank engaged and turning properly. The mysterious 'tap' is cut from scratch, or a bolt that has been modified with cutting channels small enough to handle the blank. If a blank is too thin, either stack them or sandwich it between two layers of metal/plastic. This will give the blank some rigid support and allow the cutting tool to stay engaged. The jig clamps to the tool post. The post is gradually fed into the cutter to allow at least a full turn of the blank until the correct depth is reached.

The stacking and/or sandwiching helps keep the rough edges down. GRANTED this isn't precision gear cutting for the space shuttle fuel feed system, its a hobby cut i.e.- (at least in this case) hobbing.

[me-bac]

Likely I am being dense but I am having a heck of a time deciphering the gear section in the Machinery's Handbook. What I would like to do is cut some simple spur gears out of aluminum using a vertical CNC mill. I'm not looking for super precise gears... this is a hobby for me. Looks like it should be pretty straight forward as gears are a circular pattern of a feature pair (the tooth and the valley) but I missing something. Would someone point me to a layman's explanation of gear design or a freebie program that can at least provide the necessary parameters or preferably export a DXF profile?

Thanks

Take a look at Spur gears | ME-BAC

You can find a free web application to involute a spur gear and export the dxf profile.

[Ken_Shea]

It's hard to beat free but when you want more then the basic gear design free software offers, look into Gearotic Motion, seems it is $150usd now, it goes way beyond basic spur gears and once purchased any further updates or enhancements are no charge ever.
Art is continually expanding and updating the soft ware and is now barely recognizable from it's first generation, there is also a user forum where Art/Bob or others are quick to help.

They also have a demo version.

"Gearotic Motion Gear design Software"


Check out YouTube for Gearotic Motion as well for a lot of vids and demos



Ken

[handlewanker]

Hi, you can cut a gear with a fly cutter held in a boring bar in a vertical mill spindle, and cut the teeth on the side of the blank, using a dividing head to do the pitch indexing.

It's quicker to buy a dedicated gear tooth cutter on EBAY if you know the module or DP of the gear you want to cut.

If you have a 10X magnifier loupe or jewellers magnifier, you can hand grind the fly cutter profile using a similar gear as the pattern for the tooth form........I projected the form of the gear tooth at 100:1 magnification using a modified photographic enlarger and cut some gears like this years ago.

I drew the form of the gear on a piece of paper stuck to the wall at a distance of 10 feet and projected the image onto it, having first calibrated the ratio for the projection by projecting a 1/8" diam rod against an image that was 100 times that size or12.5 " wide.
Ian.

[greg b]

I remember years ago my young fella broke a bakalite spur gear in our valve refacing machine and we were in a huge hurry to get it up and running so I got a old tap that had the same pitch as the gear and ground 3 of the flutes off and used it in our bridgeport turret mill to cut the teeth on a alluminium blank we machined,that machine is still running perfect at least 6 years later.I guess if its not a accurate part theres lots of ways to fix. it

[greggv]

Look at gearotic.com. A really neat gear drawing and machining programm