GearHeads Corner

Hello, I'm using many functional gears and there allways Comes up the difficulty that These gears are very "stepy" see Picture. This behaviour makes is hard to get These files into 3D Systems and extrude them to solids.
Is there a possibility to change the high amount of Little lines into a single Spline. Maybe integrated in the Export function of Gearotic? Or coes anybody know a good tool to do so. I tried alot Systems but did not get really helping results.

BR Marc

Stay healthy

Hi Marc:

  Ive had  some success with importing them to Vexx and selecting the option to
convert them to arcs and lines. You do have to play with the tolerance settings in options
depending on the gears, but it will usually smooth quite a bit with the proper setting.

  The jaggies are the result of the way those gears are designed, by digital subtraction
over the entire rotation.

Art

Thanks for your answer. Vexx seems to be quite helpfull but dxf-file exported from Vexx can't be opened in Fusion360. If I bring the simplified gear back to Gearotic and Export a dxf-file it can be opened in Fusion360 but seems to be an open contour and can't be extruded.

Any idea?

Hi:

    Do you have Acad2013 selected in options as the output type in Vexx options settings? I find360fusion doesnt
like any DXF prior to that.

Art

Concerning "open contours" ?

I always apply on contours that SHOULD be closed the command PEDIT (PolylineEDIT).
If the contours are carefully closed all than is converted to a "one and only line".
If there are not closed contours you can easily see them and close the problem simply.
So, it's a sort of quality control before problems can arise from non closed contours.

Hessel

p.s. Another frequently encounted problem while dxf's converting from one program to another is that there are lines on top of each other.
Milling programs can struggle with it !
The command "OVERKILL"