making Helical gear with fly cutter

[ozzie34231]

Art,
I see that in GM but I don't see how it helps me.
I want to be able to take the groove profile, open it in my cam program to create G-code enabling my CNC lathe to make a gear cutter; not an end mill, a gear cutter. I can do that now by loading the whole GM gear into the CAM, but I run into the problem of exactly aligning a grove profile with an axis. Then I need to make a mate to the groove and use that to get code.
It would be so much easier if GT would have an output option "Groove profile STL", with a centered axis line.
With that option we could make a cutter, and others might want to make a "D" mill.
Ozzie

[ArtF]

Ozzie:

  Would a dxf of the profile do?

Art

[ozzie34231]

Don't see why not.
I don't know much about the various formats. I seem to remember that STLs are made of triangles and DXF probably can use true radii where they exist. While an involute gear might not have any radii, a timing pulley does.
If true, a DXF would be better for the timing pulley; don't know about the gear.
How does DXF handle the involute curve?
Ozzie

[ArtF]

Ozzie:

I think youd want dxf in all cases. STL's are 3d shell objects, dxf is the only real way to get any accuracy on evolutes.

Art