Tinkercad and a gear generator - cool

[drezal]

Hi Guys.  Gearotic rocks and I've had a lot of fun playing with it.  Recently I've gotten intereste d in 3D printing.  Up until now I've been cutting gears using Gearotic (as well as a few other programs) on a small 3040 CNC with great results.  But the 3D thing kept grabbing my attention .  When I saw that Monoprice had a fully assembled 3D printer for $199 I had to take the plunge.  I've ordered it but it's not here yet.  So in the meantime I've been playing around with 3D printing software. 

I've been working with Design Spark for 3D design and it's cool.  And then I found Tinkercad .  Most here probably already know about it but it was new to me.  Super easy interface and the learning curve is very small.  Especiall y if you have any experienc e with Inkscape or most CAD programs.

The thing I just found about in Tinkercad is there is a community of people that have shared their stock and adjustabl e designs.  One design is for making gears of really interesti ng shapes.  Everythin g is adjustabl e with that little gear generator - with, thickness, blade height, blade bevel, blade angle, spacing.. ...  I just goofed around with it (AND I NEED TO GET BACK TO REGULAR WORK HERE!!) and made some 3D fans with very long fins, and then goofed around with the bevel design.  Another cool thing is how it happens in real time, so as you raise the parameter s the shape changes right there, makes visualizi ng very easy. 

Anyhow, I'd be curious to hear back from Art or anyone else that plays with it or makes some 3D prints.  The generator "app" is in Tinkercad, under Community, and on Page 16.

Dan

[drezal]

Okay.  This is really too much fun. 

In looking through the other app programs under the community tab there is one for 3D printing a wire spring.  I will have to give that a try and see how much run time is possible.  There was a guy on Thingiver se that made a 3D printed clock that ran on a 3D printed spring.  He was able to get about 30 minutes of run time - it was a pretty small spring he made to fit in his design.  But....wh at if the spring was made larger?  Hmmmm.

Dan

[Nate]

... 
Anyhow, I'd be curious to hear back from Art or anyone else that plays with it or makes some 3D prints.  The generator "app" is in Tinkercad, under Community, and on Page 16.
...

I've made some more exotic gears with a 3D printer.  e.g.

http://gearotic.com/ESW/FavIcons/index.php?topic=1313.msg9132#msg9132

[Mooselake]

You can also make 3D printable gears direct from Gearotic, which are a lot more accurate than most online gear generator s.  I made my first design with Tinkercad, a shaving mug, over 4 years ago.  It's had some tough times but seems to be doing well under AutoDesk.

You'll need to learn what the limitatio ns of your soon to arrive 3D printer are, don't expect to make very fine pitched gears with it for example.

I've almost ordered the $200 Monoprice a couple times so I can give it to my engineer daughter - it's gotten a number of good reviews, plus it has a 32 bit controlle r (which you'll likely want to update the firmware on, see the Monoprice support forum).  I'd like to know what you think of it.  You'll undoubted ly have some frustrati ng moments, but persist and you'll get over them.  Enjoy your new printer!

I'm sitting next to a plywood Printrbot Plus right now, printing a adapter (designed with openSCAD) to attach a ham radio head to a floor mount.

Kirk

[drezal]

Thanks for the replies.  Cool stuff.  Yeah, I'm not expecting phenomena l results from this printer but we'll see.  The biggest drawback I can see at the moment is the small printing area.  Just under 5" square.  But this is a learning tool just to dip my toe in the water. 

And, yes, Gearotic can export great stuff.  I played around with exporting some stl files from gearotic and opening them up in some slicing programs.  Looking forward to the tinkering .

Dan