Experience with 3D Printed Gears

[thefro526]

In 2013, I printed a couple of gears to drive encoders and they were a non issue. If anything, they made a lot of issues go away. Specs on those were 20dp, 60T, material was ABS.

One of the tricks I picked up was to print the gears a bit oversized, something like .002/.003" over and run them against a metal gear. The plastic gear has a tendency to wear into shape when driven by an aluminum or steel gear, and you suddenly have a relatively low backlash interface.

For the most part, if you're printing gears to interface with a sensor, you'll be fine. If you're putting enough power into the gear to break it, odds are you've destroyed your sensor in the process.