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Originally Posted by sanddrag
I'm wondering if a laser machine would be able to burn out some lexan (0r acrylic) gears without melting it. It doesn't have to be super precise, just functional enough for a demo box. If not, maybe a waterjet? Do you have access to either of those? With proper indexing equipment and a gear cutter you could even cut your own gears on a mill.
I'm not totally going for the friction wheel thing. I think gears would be way cooler, even if some extra work is involved.
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A few notes about laser cutting:
One of our few sponsors owns a shop specialized in laser cutting, so most of our "professional" looking parts are made by him.
He has cut us several acrylic gears and we didn't have a problem with that (except... acrylic shatters - rookie mistakes
), though it should be noticed that those were large pitch gears - for the window motor, I think. Not sure if finer pitch gears, like 20 or 32 DP, would be cut correctly.
Another thing to notice is, allegedly, bad gases are released when polycarbonate is heated/melted, so he only cuts it when the shop is closed. Since we are thankful enough for his sponsorship, we don't ask him to cut any polycarbonate for us. That'd probably be a similar issue with other laser cutting shops: they won't do it or maybe they'll charge you a ridiculous amount for it.