Helical Gear Generator
Description
Helical gears resemble spur gears with the teeth at an angle. They can be meshed in parallel or crossed orientations at 90 degrees or arbitrary angles and can be generated with as little as a single tooth forming a screw gear.
Gears may be specified in either the 'Normal' or the 'Radial' system or the fixed profile Sunderland standard, any of which can be generated as either Left or Right handed. Handedness in helical gears refers to the direction the teeth lean when the gear is placed flat on a table.
Using this add-in, proper Herringbone gears (such as the gears used for this add-in's thumbnail) can be created by using a Sunderland profile then mirroring the gear about one of its faces. In the case of Herringbone or other double-helix gears, the handedness of the base gear is not as significant as it is for single helix gears - to effectively change the handedness of a Herringbone / double helix gear all you need to do is flip it over - whereas for a single helix gear it must be mirrored to change its handedness.
Finally, by setting a helix angle of 0 degrees, Spur gears can be created and defined in the metric system (as opposed to the sample Spur Gear script which defines gears in the American system) with this add-in.
Be sure to check out the Gear Down For What YouTube channel and on thingiverse - he is doing some amazing things with Helical Gears!
Works pretty well but the gears are not accurate to the norm at all, there seems to be an issue at least with module <1. It´s off by at least 1mm
So easy to use, crazy!
How can I create with this awesome plug in a gear Hypoid ?
Dude! I have been stuck for years trying to create a set of crossed helical gears for a 1920's gas engine model, and now I can! This set is in inches but I was able to noodle out the metric equivalents.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TvcW-r51GG0
Looking forward to experimenting with the backlash setting... I want to print a working set for a model, and my resin prints are usually a little "fat" on the surface. Is the lash mm setting an equivalent normal offset of the surface?
how to make the screw gears? I cant find it.
Screw gears are simply a low tooth count helical gear with a very high helix angle. The one pictured has 4 teeth but you can go as low as 1 tooth. Such a gear is easiest to define in the "normal" system as the diameter of the gear is then a free variable - in other words expect a low tooth count gear to have a large diameter. The real trick is to realize that this is a crossed-helix application - notice that the direction of rotation of input to output is shifted by 90 degrees. In a standard mesh you would create 2 gears with the same helix angle and of opposite hands. In a crossed mesh like this you create 2 gears of the SAME hand whose helix angles add up to the desired mesh angle (90 in this case). For example to create a 40:1 ratio with a 1 tooth screw and 40T spur you could use a helix angle of 80 degrees on the screw (1T) and a helix angle of 10 degrees on the spur (40T) both of EITHER left OR right handedness. Yes, you can create gears that mesh at other angles - it doesn't have to be 0 or 90 it can be anything but at some point it will make sense to flip the handedness of one of the pair - for example one could think of a left handed gear as simply a right handed one with a greater than 90 degree helix angle. Note that what you'll end up with is a screw gear mesh NOT a worm and worm gear. Screw and worm gear meshes serve the same general purpose but worms can be used for considerably higher load applications than screws. A true worm mesh has a line of contact between the meshing faces which allows it to transfer considerably higher loads than the point contact of the screw mesh where the teeth are literally contacting at only a single point. Be sure to use a lubricant (white lithium grease, etc., assuming plastic) after a break in period to prolong the gears lifetime.
It works great!
Top addin
Very consistent and does the job very well. Much faster and more consistent than by hand. Great job!
Works great for spur gear, but dimension are wrong with an helix angle.
Make a gear module 1mm with 31 teeth and draw on it a circle of 31mm diameter. The primitif diameter of the gear is much bigger than the 31mm circle.
my parameters : Normal system, right, 30deg, 20deg, 1mm, 31, 0mm, 10mm
Hope you could fix it, thanks
See the hover text / image on the Gear Standard field. Use the radial system (not normal system) for the behavior you are looking for (where module and tooth number result in a fixed gear diameter independent of helical angle). In the normal system changing the helical angle will change the gear diameter.
Easy to use and also great for worm gears too. Just what I needed thanks. Just cant edit the gear once created in fusion.
Now what about bevel and spiral bevel gears ... your next challenge.
Correction - screw gears, not worm gears. Cross helical mesh (aka screw gears) as can be made with this plugin have a point contact while worm gears have a line of contact and can carry significantly more load. I've dabbled with generating bevel gears but they are surprisingly not very standardized with multiple common tooth profiles in use for various reasons, mostly to do with manufacturing methods. My exploration into spherical involute profiles (which I did many years ago now) never got beyond the proof of concept stage, but I did manage to generate a few bevel gear profiles but IIRC fusion started to really chug on more than moderate tooth counts (I'm sure it would do better these days - they have made a lot of performance improvements over the years). As for spiral gears... the math gets nuts and it's frankly beyond me to work out for myself and I never found a source for generating the gear profiles programmatically - nor had the need myself to really force me to figure it out :P
I want Win64
Thanks, excelent app
Works for what I need. Wish it were parametric but oh well.
And another thing: the bodies created are named "Healical Gear"... just a quick fix to line 877. ;)
I created two herringbone gear in surrender mode. first 18 tooth and second 72 tooth. they are not compatible. neither in the program nor in the 3D output.
Did you remember to make one left handed and the other right handed? Helical gears must be of opposite hands to mesh in classical gearing applications.
I really like it, quick and easy to use
Brilliant, thanks so much
Thanks a lot
This is really good, and can generate regular spur gears as well if you set the helix to 0 degrees.
THANK YOU
Great sucess using this generator to make function 3d printed gears. A requested new feature would be the option to create a tapered helical gear.
Easy to install, easy to use, perfect result - excelent! Thanks.
Thank you very much
Works pretty good!
Installer worked for MacOS without a problem.
Simple to use. Works great.
The installer still does not work for MacOS, but Ross was kind to provide a usable package by e-mail. The addon works great! Really easy to use and results are perfect.
Addendum and dadendum doesn't seem to do anything in Radial system.
Very many thanks !
Very easy to use and gave me exactly what i needed
Great gear generator.
Can this also be used to generate the gear for the inside of a ring and not just the outside?
Great add-in!
This plugin is perfect for creating herringbone gears
Thank you! Very comfortably!
Parameters are well documented and the resulting gears mesh nicely.
Haven't been able to use it since it consistently crashes Fusion 360.
This definitely makes life quite a bit easier for designing gear boxes! Only downside is that the tooth count input won't accept parameters; it just throws an error – "Teeth – must be greater than 0." – when I try to use a pre-defined parameter
Thanks for the addon
Be nice to select either metric or inch for the units. Or have it use the default units for each design. Not everyone uses metric.
Easy to use and the results are fantastic!!