Quote:
Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi
What features of the gear tooth profile would you say were too complex/detailed/unnecessary? What features were essential, in your opinion? And lastly, would it make much of a difference to the tooth surface if cut on a laser as opposed to a waterjet?
Thanks!
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It's not so much what is essential/non-essential, it's more about how much detail is needed; it's the same feature either way (the tooth profile). The gear tooth profile is not just a simple arc, it's a changing curve. You can approximate it as less curves and still get reasonable accuracy (which you'll notice a lot of people/companies have done on their CAD models). I also imagine different machines might not get "confused" by the new curve.
If you google some about how to draw spur gears, you'll see what I mean and it will make total sense.
I can't make the blanket statement about water versus laser, just that the run of lasered parts we did this year that were .125 thick had a much cleaner and smoother edge than this run of waterjetted parts. I did tell the waterjetter to cut everything very fast though (to test if we get the same functionality out of less sponsor time), not sure how valid of a comparison that is. There are an awful lot of machines on the market as well, combined with the fact that machine settings can also have a huge effect on finish.