Quote:
Originally Posted by asid61
waterjet is inaccurate and has an extreme taper
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That's not strictly true. A good waterjet will produce little taper on a 1/4" or so thick part. One with a tilting head will effectively produce zero taper and hold .001-.002" overall tolerances. You certainly can cut a gear that will run at relatively low speed, but it will only be an approximation of the involute tooth profile and it will mesh relatively poorly with a COTS spur gear. I had some very large ring gears waterjetted for a project at work and they worked well.
That being said, whatever the OP is trying to do can almost certainly be done faster, easier, and with higher quality by adapting the design to use COTS gears, even if they are steel Martin gears that require putting a custom bore in.