Zephyr Orbital Gears

[Louis Luu]

Received this yesterday to study.  Supposedly the gears are stripped.  Will be taking it apart to study and see if the gears can be replicated.

[Louis Luu]

The worm gears are fine.  The spur gears are worn, especially the one in the middle.  I'll have to wash off the oil/grease to study it before drawing it up.

[Dave McManaman]

Looking forward to seeing what you can do with this toward making a proper replacement. Always enjoy watching your work Louis!

[Louis Luu]

This compound worm/spur gear is pressed on.  The worm is steel and the brass is actually milled from one piece and pressed on with fiber washer in between.

 

The spur gear has excessive wear....put side by side next to another worm gear (much thicker teeth).

The engagement gear has the top part for slippage to prevent further damage.

[Louis Luu]

[Louis Luu]

[Louis Luu]

[Louis Luu]

Looks like both the spur gear and the worm gears are the same.

[Louis Luu]

I'm leaning towards bronze printing.  Bronze is much sturdier than brass.  Bronze is more slippery than steel.  Bronze also has great detail printing capability.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Louis Luu

[Louis Luu]

I think I may have solved a way to make a template to cut any spur and worm gears with the proper angle with high resolution.  Will post a draft and idea in an hour.  Testing it right now.

 

[Louis Luu]

This template can input depth, pitch, angle height.....etc. 

For example, from this

 

to this (changed angle to 2.8)

Edited August 13, 2023 by Louis Luu

[Louis Luu]

The beauty of this is akin to a lathe.  All you do is measure the profile of one tooth and do a virtual cutting 360 degrees.  Both the tooth on the worm and spur gear match perfectly with the correct angle and spacing.  Here is a test run with this cutter I generated.

[Louis Luu]

[Louis Luu]

Here is the same cutter on the spur gear.  The angle, height all fit together.  Essentially, one can make any cutter they want and treat it as a lathe.

[Louis Luu]

I do need to apply this to the collar cone gears....the cone gears will be much more accurate with this method.

[Louis Luu]

I also have a Fidelity 16 inch gear I need to cut out....this will make it possible.

[Louis Luu]

Here is my cutter bit I used on the cylinder to make the worm gear.  I essentially rotated the bit 360 degrees and cut the cylinder.

[Louis Luu]

This picture explains it a bit better.  Essentially, the bottom piece (cutter) defines the worm gear.  If you flip it 90 degrees and apply it to a cylinder, now you end up with a worm gear.

 

[Jim Kovar]

A zero pitch worm?
      How duz that work?

[Jim Kovar]

Just funning with ya, Louis.
    Keep up the good work!

[Louis Luu]

Jim...I have no idea what pitch is other than just Angle.  I know you are joking....but seriously, I'm no engineer.  I just do what makes sense.  All them terminologies are meaningless to me I just figure them out or try to make sense out of them in my head.  I borrowed a few ideas.  The first one was watching how machinist cut their gears.  They use some sort of hardened shaped material and start cutting.  I figure I do the same but just virtually on the computer.

[Louis Luu]

2 hours ago, Jim Kovar said:

A zero pitch worm?
      How duz that work?

I just caught what you were referring to....I need to also move the cutting in the z direction and connect one end to the other.  Got some math to figure out.  I still think this will be a faster way of making gears.

[Louis Luu]

So if I rotate it and move it along the Z axis....now I connect one with the other.  So basically angle it and move along the Z axis like a lathe would cut.

 

[Louis Luu]

To get this after subtracting it from the cylinder.

[Louis Luu]

I was cutting the cylinder and forgot to move it along the Z axis.  This gear would go no where.