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Unread 22-01-2004, 16:46
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Chris Hibner Chris Hibner is offline
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Re: Drawing Involute curves

Quote:
Originally Posted by maclaren
Does anyone know of a way to draw involute curves with inventor. So that I can make accurate gears.
Can I ask why you are drawing the involute curves? Is this for a CAD competition or for CNC'ing some custom gears? If not, I wouldn't bother drawing the teeth. I would simply represent the gears as disks whose diameter is the pitch diameter.

I've never drawn an involute on CAD, so I couldn't tell you how. However, I can tell you how to draw an involute curve on paper (perhaps that will help).

First, Take something circular (like a cylinder) and attach a string to the circle somehow. Then, wrap the string around the circle. Pretend that the tip of the string has a pencil on it. Lay the circle (wrapped with string) on a sheet of paper. Trace around the circle. Lastly, while keeping the string tight, begin unwrapping the string. The path drawn by the tip of the string is an involute curve.

If you search the net, you can probably find a mathematical formula for plotting an involute. Perhaps then you could spline it into CAD.
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