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How to make spherical gears without using custom features?
james_aguilar160
Member Posts: 54 ✭
Friends,
I saw the most amazing youtube video where a creator built a 3d printed tourbillion. I'll post the video at the end.
One very interesting aspect of the video was that the tourbillions are powered by 3d spherical gears — gears where the gear tooth profile has been projected onto a spherical shell. I do not know what software the creator is using, but any time I see something like this, I wonder "how could I do that in OnShape." And in this case, I actually do not know. I can definitely make the shell itself, and I can make the gear profile, but I do not know how to project the profile onto the shell to cut it out.
My best idea so far would be to create a larger sketch of the gear, outside the shell, and smaller profile of the gear, circumscribed by the inside well of the shell. I could loft these two profiles and then intersect them with the shell. Is this correct? Is there a better way to do it?
Even with this approach, I can understand how the pinion would be developed, but I cannot understand how the "rack" gears (the one indicated by the arrows in the below image) would be developed in OnShape.
Please let me know if you have ideas. I would be fascinated to have a better understanding of how to use onshape to build things like this.
The video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnQsow6iT5c
Comments
I was able to make this by intersecting a sphere section with a pair of bevel gears. So I guess this question actually devolves to being a question about how to make bevel gears without featurescript, assuming that's even possible.
And then, now that I understand that this problem is a composition of two other problems, I searched for how to make a bevel gear from scratch and found this post:
So, I guess my question is answered! It is possible to do what I wanted purely in OnShape without FeatureScript!