Need help selecting gear cutter

Forum focus is on traditional conventional ways in gear cutting.
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Alan Reinhart
Old Timer
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2013 12:16 pm

Need help selecting gear cutter

Post by Alan Reinhart »

Greetings to all!

I've been asked to make a small gear to be used in a wind speed indicator.  This is on the Battleship New Jersey museum-ship, and apparently the size is a bit odd and hard to find.

What I know: The OD of the gear is 9/16", it has a 64 pitch and 35 teeth. I do not have the center distance to it's mateing gear.

I have a stepper-motor based indexer with which I can step off the 35 teeth.
I'd like to get some general info on how to select an involute gear cutter given an OD, pitch and number of teeth.

TIA!

=Alan R.
Ken_Shea
Old Timer
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 2:19 pm

Re: Need help selecting gear cutter

Post by Ken_Shea »

Alan,
If you fail to find a cutter and I believe it may be difficult for you to do, there is a book called Gears and Gear Cutting by Ivan Law that describes how to make gear cutters for about any DP. These are available pretty inexpensively if you do a search for it. Believe I got this one from Amazon some years back.
John Stevenson (on this forum) as I recall, described one method on how to make cutters on the Home Shop machinist forum. I haven't been there for a while so can't help with a link, maybe he will read this and offer it.

Ken
Alan Reinhart
Old Timer
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2013 12:16 pm

Re: Need help selecting gear cutter

Post by Alan Reinhart »

Ken - thanks for the info. Acutally - I DO have that book!  I was hoping to avoid the process of making the cutter - my plate is already pretty full. Taking the time to go into creating, hardening, etc, while a wondeful learning experience would just delay me even more.

I'll have to review the book to see if there is any info on the calculations...

The gear is small enough that maybe I could get away with a slitting saw!  ;D

=Alan R.

Ken_Shea
Old Timer
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 2:19 pm

Re: Need help selecting gear cutter

Post by Ken_Shea »

Alan,
I understand then time thing for sure.

Not sure but believe you may find a gear in the DP and tooth count searching gears for remote control cars or such. Whether they may be thick enough or not I'm also not sure. but may be worth a look see.


Ken
Alan Reinhart
Old Timer
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2013 12:16 pm

Re: Need help selecting gear cutter

Post by Alan Reinhart »

Yes - you are on the right wavelength!  The fellow working on this project did just that - and DID find the gear on an RC supplies site.

The rub was - it was a 'pot-metal' gear, and wouldn't stand up to the hard use of the wind-speed indicator. And so I'm hoping to be able to make a 4 or 5 inch lengh brass stock cut with the teeth, then part off and finsish machine sets of gears so they have some spares.
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