The ONLY program (that I could find on the internet) for automatically generating patterns suitable for gears, wheels, coasters and other applications.
download the Processing IDE from https://www.processing.org/download/
The Processing IDE does not require installation. Unzip the download, move it to your desired location, and run it.
download the latest Toxiclibs additional functionality programming libraries from https://bitbucket.org/postspectacular/toxiclibs/downloads/
Unzip the download and copy all the folders to the “libraries” folder in your Processing “sketchbook” location. This location can be found under File, Preferences of the Processing IDE.
Download the lastest script and document from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48396199/The_Wheel_Tool.zip
Unzip the download, read the document, load the script, be creative.
Share your knowledge, tools, techniques and tips to all the Glowforge community, and the wider artisan, etsy, hobby and educational communities.
Good find. I believe with sufficient practice some free svg software can do this as well using the mirror function. I have taken scribbles, loaded them into illustrator, cropped them then mirrored along the straight side and got some nice effects for Web design. Have fun
Gears unfortunately get really complicated in the teeth: If you want to see how to make a gear from scratch, you can watch Adam Savage do it here. As he mentions in the video, for making working gears, you need to select precise widths, depths and contours to your teeth so that they mate properly for your application.
Of course, there are plenty of web apps you can use to make them for you. You don’t need to know all the details of gear mechanics, but it helps to know a few.
Gearotic is an interesting gear design program that lets you design/specify gears and gear trains, simulate them on screen, and generate CAD files of the gears you’ve designed or specified.
A search for Gearotic on YouTube should turn up some interesting tutorials, including some on imaginary gears that can’t be easily machined but could be cut with a Glowforge.
SketchUp has a nice plugin that allows you to create involute gears. You can specify the radius, number of teeth, and tooth angles. It is called Cadalog_Gear.
I used the plugin to create the outline of the gear, then I exploded that outline, took one “section” of the gear, and embellished it. I then used the rotate feature to “mirror” that section around the whole gear. It worked great for me.
Another vote for Gearotic 2.0
You can also design the Escapements so you can make working things. Here is a “Grasshopper” Escapement as an example. (One of the things on my list of build items when I get my GF)
