GearHeads Corner

Hi All,

I'm using Gearotic 2.2990 to design a clock. I'm aligning the gears for the hour and minute hands to the same shaft. Gearotic Motion used to recognize this and generate a popup asking if I wanted to use the same shaft, but Gearotic 2.0 isn't asking and just places the new gear on the existing shaft. Has the technique for creating a new shaft aligned with an existing shaft changed or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,
Ken

Hi Ken:

  The way thing are driven internally negated the need I think.. If two gears share a shaft, usually one is driver by another gear
which in turn is drivern by a shaft, any gear driven by a shaft can have its rotation corrected, so correcting the rotational position of the driving gear will align that gear on its shaft. ( That sounds complex.... What are you attempting? Is this so you can place a minute or hour hand on the same shaft?

Art

Ken:

  If Im right, your trying to get an hour and minute hand on one shaft. This now works this way..

Drop both indicators on the one shaft. One is probably now turning properly. To make the other work properly,
click on the shaft in the tree, notice the linkage says its driving 2 indicators. Click the hour hand linkage
and remove it with "Remove linakage" . Now its still there but undriven. Now click the hour hands gear
which is on that original shaft, click "Add Linkage", this tells the system you want that gear to drive
something else. ( Any gear may  drive multiple things, but may only be driven by one.).
The box that pops up will show you all undriven things. The hour hand will be there, select it.

Now both hands are on one shaft, one driven by the shaft, the other by the hour gear.

Art

Hi Art,

As usual, you quickly set me back on the right path and my clock hands are now working!

Gearotic 2.0 is a huge improvement over GM, but I'm still trying to get my head around the changes. Being able to change links is very powerful and I think I understand it now.

I believe there was a sample clock project available with GM. Is there a 2.0 version of this?

Thanks for a wonderful software tool,
Ken

Oops, I spoke too soon.

I unlinked the hour hand from the shaft and then linked it to the hour gear. Although the hour gear is turning clockwise, the hour hand is turning in the opposite direction. How is this possible and how do I fix it?

Thanks,
Ken

Ken:

  Hmm, that sounds liek a bug, I must have allowed it to reverse as a gear would. Ill fix that up..

The original clock project is still in the data folder in the program folders geardata folder.. it hasnt
as yet been updated though..

Art

Ken:

  Thx for that bug, it has been corrected. It will be fixed in next update, Im in the middle of a summer teardown of the code though,
so it may be a couple weeks till I can get a version released.

Thx
Art

Thanks Art - no rush!

It may be just an illusion, but it appears that the hour hand is moving at a different speed than the gear, as well as in the wrong direction.

Did you see/fix that or am I the one that needs a vacation?

Ken

Ken:

  It was. It was making  ratio of 1 tooth on the indicator, to however many on the gear.. :)

It was fixed as well.

Art