Lasers! And gears!

[gfish]

Last week I finally got around to trying out the laser cutter at Metrix. It was so easy. Walked in with a USB drive with a SVG file I made in Inkscape, 6 minutes and $15 later I had the following:



(8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 40 and 60 teeth.)

Let me emphasize what a phenomenal price $15 is for 7 gears. This is a fabrication technique that deserves some serious study. As such, I'm working on adapting the design for a mechanical clock. I should be able to get everything made this way except the weight and some random pieces of hardware laser cut.

Comments

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

Sa-weet! CNC laser cutting is one of the best machining processes to come along in quite a while.

Finding a place that will do metal gears that cheap makes me concede that metal, rather than cardboard, for your digital sundial may be the way to go.

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

Or are those plywood gears?

[keystricken.livejournal.com]

Looks like plywood to me. Laser-cut wood has some lovely distinctive dark edges, as if they'd been lightly singed (which in fact they have).

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Plywood, yeah. They will only cut wood and acrylic there.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of Inkscape or SVG. Educational!

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

What kind of wood is it? Or will they hold up long as working gears, I guess is more what I'm asking.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

These were cheap poplar, but I'd expect them to last pretty well depending on the context. They should certainly work well enough for a clock. The cherry they had looked really nice, but I'm still prototyping.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

This is why I was able to design model rocket kits (http://www.rocketreviews.com/reviews/all/alway_astrobee-1500.shtml) that I'm really proud of (like the one in my userpic). I know a gentleman in Chigago (http://www.balsamachining.com/) who can do this with model rocket tubes as well as wood and cardboard sheets. If I can think it, he can make it.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

That is pretty sexy.

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

For a second seeing the picture in my friends list without having read the text I thought those were gearcakes. Which would also be cool.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I might have to steal that as an epithet. Gearcakes!

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Gear pies, man. Gear pies.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

That's absolutely gorgeous, and wowie what a price.

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

I've sometimes thought it would be nice to have lego gears in nonstandard diameters. The acrylic would work nicely, just cut an X shaped hole in the center for a shaft.

Does inkscape let you design one tooth and then repeat it however many times around the circle?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

It actually has a create gear rendering function, where you can specific the number of teeth, tooth pitch, and pressure angle.