GearHeads Corner

Hello Everyone..


    Version 2.279 is online. The formulaic gears are not yet ready, but it was time for a general cleanup.
Many bugs were submitted lately, the upcoming module is being hard on my head, so when that happens
I look back and fix up bad stuff whilst I think about how to do a new thing..
  As a result, this version has many new icons, several GUI swaps to clean things up, and a re-release
of rythmic geneva's. A very short video is here..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwrwvdW ... e=youtu.be

  Youll find several things changed, let me know if they interfere with or cause GUI troubles on your systems,
I just never know as I use very large and multiple monitors.. so what may look good to me.. well, may simply
suck on yours. :). The sim has been updated a bit to reflect some errors I found in Mach4's Sim plugin. So it
may work for you if it didnt before. Same with video and snapshot output.
    Non-circular toothing has been sped up a bit, but it hasnt been antialiased, Ill try to do that when I get to toothing
the new gear type, which will use the noncirc's general toothing algorithm.
 
    Thanks for all the recent feedback, and welcome to all new users from the past month or two.

Good luck,
have fun
Art

The place to download is http://www.gearotic.com/linkcnt/click.php?id=4, right? For some reason I still get .275 from there.

Sorry about that, the link was defective, fixed and proper version is now online.

Art

Supercool, now the SetPixelFormat error is gone for 3-axis sim and I think the UI looks better as well. Nice work indeed.

This is now a very minor thing, but the CNC sim looks weird. Very blocky, see the attached photo. Again the OpenGL goodness with AMD cards probably?

Hi:

  Hmm, seems the pixelformat is now OK.. but another problem exists..

Ill come up with a diagnotic routine to help us track it down...

Thx
Art

Aa-and I ran into another possible issue. Pulleys and root wall cleaning op seems to be bit funky, it cuts deeply into the wheel.

Sorry about all that :)

Hi:

  This isnt really a bug...

  Root wall clearing should not be done except on epicycloidals and involutes. They are the only two profiles which have
actual roots. Pulleys and sprockets and the like are arc profiles, so root wall clearing can erase parts of their teeth. Tangental and rooting itself are about all you can can do with most pulleys and sprockets, Wall clearing should be used only when a user feels from the simulation that it would help in removal of material he wants removed.

Thx
Art

Thanks, good to know. I come from a sort of regular CNC/CAM background, so having that specialized strategies is bit new and takes time to get used to.

(For background..)

  It happened because originally GM put out code for tangental shaving of involutes, a prety well known technique for
cutting gears on 4th axis, but few programs ( if any) actually cut pulleys or sprockets on 4th axis, so in G2, I allowed pulleys and sprockets to be done, and updated the algorithms so instead of using involute math to determine passes, it uses the actual graphical shape of the tooth.
  The upside to that is you can in thoery do any tooth shape, but you need to pay more attention to how its done, and while involutes will be as good as ever, pulleys , sprockets and such will be hit or miss depending on shape, and a user using the paths available to their best advantage in terms of depth per pass and type of pass.On some youll want tangental, some root wall ( though not many) and on most root clearing which will do most of the work on irregular shapes.. my thought was not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, better a rough sprocket tooth than none at all. :)

Art

Viljo:

  Wow.. very nice engravings. Those lighters must have taken awhile.. are they cnc egraved with a cutting tool
or are they done with some sort of burnishing tool?

(Nice work regardless..)

Art

Nice, very good to know background of the things. I was actually really surprised about the price of the program after seeing the functionality. And I found the program just few days after I got the books about gear cutting and clock making, figure that...

The engravings on my site are all handmade, no CNC there. Cut with pneumatic push graver (not rotating one). Long time ago I made this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-fhCOXiyYc. "Action" starts at about 3 minutes. Should give some idea of the process :)

I have many ideas about mixing up the CNC made gears, hand engraving them or the mechanisms etc. But as always, too few hours in a day. Will see how it goes.

Accidentally hitting respoke with a bearing on the project screen makes it go away.  I was using a roller bearing, don't know if that makes a difference, and the shaft type was set to square (a leftover from before, the bearing still had a round shaft).  After the errant respoke the square shaft was still there, but no bearing.  Perhaps it's just a reminder to not fiddle with the wrong buttons?  Not to put square pegs in round holes?

Kirk

Kirk:

  If that happens, look to the project tree, if it shows the name in RED , then its still there but the solid fails
for some reason. ( The square shaft may push into the triangualtion badly or something..). Respoking with a
proper value will usually make it appear again..

:)
Art

The bearing was still there in red, but I couldn't figure out how to change the shaft.  Deleting the shaft leaves the red bearing item, but it doesn't reappear.

No big deal, if I can't make it come back it's the only thing in the project anyway.  I'll try not to do that again...

Kirk

For some reason when I toolpath a non circular gear and run simulation or in Mach4 the tool pauses, raises up and then down in Z as it is makes every  pass...

I down loaded the older version and it "cuts" properly...dropping the Z the proper pass depth as it goes around inside the gear ??

Also missing the text next to: Depth, Final Pass and safe Z ..

Getting ready to cut a few BIG gears out of MDF...