[Gearotic Motion V 4 7 127
Oludare Padilla
Gearotic Motion is a powerful software tool for designing and simulating various types of gears and mechanical systems. Developed by ArtSoft Canada Inc., this program is designed to be user-friendly and accessible to both beginners and advanced users.
With Gearotic Motion, users can create a wide variety of gears and other mechanical components using an intuitive interface and an array of powerful features. The program includes a library of pre-designed gear templates that users can select from, as well as the ability to generate custom gears using a range of parameters such as pitch, diameter, and tooth profile.
In addition to designing gears, Gearotic Motion also allows users to simulate the motion of complex mechanical systems, with support for mesh analysis, motion testing, and collision detection. The program also includes tools for creating CNC code, allowing users to take their designs from concept to reality.
Gearotic Motion is a versatile and powerful tool for anyone interested in mechanical design and engineering. Whether you are a hobbyist or a professional, this software offers the tools you need to create precise and functional mechanical components with ease.
This project is simply amazing! This student created from scratch an entire planetarium with over 70 gears. He used a do-it-yourself CNC, fusion 360 and the program gearotic motion to come up with the gears combination.
Since we all have access to arduinos and a stepper motor from our kits I thought it would be a good idea to base the motor control off of that. for the final motor control we will need to use larger independently powered motors. The advantage of using stepper motors is high positional accuracy built in without any other systems. The major disadvantage is high cost and power consumption.
One option is to close the loop and use a dc motor with a pid control to position it. I found some helpful code that was helpful to understanding the control scheme. the primary advantages for this would be lower cost, faster speed, and potentially increased accuracy. The primary disadvantages would be the increased complexity of a hall effect sensor and magnets along the ring.
The gantry design was done in fusion 360. The frame will be cut out of two sheets of 3/4 nominal plywood. The gear teeth for the internal gears will need to be cut with a 1/4 inch bit. for generating the gears I used this script to generate the gears, with some modification after the fact. This had some issues and though I was able to adapt it to the drawing it was less than idea.
Studying gears is faschinating. The first important concept about gears is the gear ratio. Definition: a gear ratiois a direct measure of the ratio of the rotational speeds of two or more interlocking gears. As a general rule, when dealing with two gears, if the drive gear (the one directly receiving rotational force from the engine, motor, etc.) is bigger than the driven gear, the latter will turn more quickly, and vice versa. We can express this basic concept with the formula Gear ratio = T2/T1, where T1 is the number of teeth on the first gear and T2 is the number of teeth on the second. Therefore, the gear ration shows how many times a gear has to turn for the other one to make an entire turn. A ratio of 1:3 means that a gear of 1 teeth will turn 3 times for each turn of the gear of 3 teeth. So, if we want to create gears for a clock, for example, we need to have a ratio of 1:12 because you need the gears with the minutes to turn 12 times for the gears with the hours to go back to the original position. Now, gears with one tooth are of course not possible and this tutorial suggests to have gears with at least with 7 teeth. So, in the case of the watch, we would have 7:84.
I also had an interesting time looking up how to make gears. There are alot of Youtube videos about how to model gears on Fusion but they are mostly out of date. Out of curiosity and frustration, I checked out Tinkercad to see if they had any good plugins and they had at least four just dedicated to making gears!
We could use a complex system of gears like the one used in the mechanical planetarium with over 70 gears. In that case, we could replicate the system of gears used in the planetarium project which is the following:
This of course is not the only combination available. However, I could not find any program like gearotic motion that would work on mac. If I understood well, with that program you can set the ratio you need and the program suggests a gears system that would work. I also found this alternative algorithm developed in R for a similar project:
Alternatively, we could use a simpler system with motors for each planet. That would save us quite a lot of headaches to figure our the gears system. In this case, we would need 2 gears for each planet. One connected to the motor and one connected to the ring of each planet. Something like this system used for a clock:
In a typical year, I realize our group would come together and make this machine that we have created on our screens! But for now, we are still not permitted to be more than 6 ' close to one another and even if we were, our entire group is in a different part of the world. So due to this fact of life right now, it was impossible to work as a team and unrealistic to expect each of us to complete this on our own. I did ask my instructors about this and they checked with coordination thar tis is acceptable given the circumstances.
I have made quite a few wooden and acrylic gears even a herribone gear using a 3axis 100 watt laser that I added 2 axis for 5 axis. I used gearotic software to create the gears and then imported them as a dxf file into my cad program where I would povide and offset of .005" for the beam. Worked really well.
You will love Gearotic Motion. I used it to make a replacement gear for my mercedes wing shield wiper mechanism and a lot of gears for kinetic art projects. You can probally see them on you tube. Here is a small herribone gear half done on my 5 axis set up. Herringbone Gears Laser Cut - YouTubeand some kinetic arts stuff thats is larger. All laser cut gears out of wood or plastic (36) SDV 0043 - YouTube
Dan
The reason that I cut the herringbone gear at a 14 degree angle one tooth at a time was because I was using the 4th and 5th axis. You cannot cut a herringbone gear on a 3 axis machine. To cut a tooth straight 14 degrees was required. So I had a really trick set up. The 4th axis allows allows for the angle to cut a straight tooth then then the 5th axis indexes . I did that by modifying a mouse. I connected it to a relay on of my cnc control box. The mouse pointer is place on the laser software start button. The G code was modified so that a relay would turn on the laser and the control box would than run one tooth then shut off the relay and then index and repeat for as many teeth as required.
I was told that it was impossible to make a herringbone gear on a laser. That set up bells in my head and I figured out relatively quickly how to cut the 14 degree and and then make two of them one for the right half and one for the left half then join then using alignment holes in each half. The I had to figure out how to take the software and actuate the program to run the laser. I took apart a old mouse and cut the wires going to the left mouse button and then ran them to a relay in my cnc control box. Last I edited the G code for the single tooth profile by offsetting the tooth width by the laser beam width and then to add a M3 to turn on the laser and a M5 to turn it off. Worked really slick.
I was also told that it was impossible to make crown gears on a laser but I think certain kinds of crown gears could be made using a modification of the herringbone gear setup. But i have too many other projects first.