Aluminum Gears

[sanddrag]

20 pitch (or even 24 pitch) aluminum spur gears. 3/8" or preferably 1/2" face width.

Rino is the only place I've found that has what I'm looking for, but I still need to find out their price.

Berg has only 16 pitch as far as I know

SDP-SI has 24 pitch but only in 3/16" face width.

Let me know if you know of anywhere that has them.

[Kirk]

Call around to local gear shops and have some custom made. Our gear shop has offered to make use AL gears for the last few years but we never went thru with it because we didn't feel the weight savings would be worth the possible strength issues.

Kirk

Originally Posted by sanddrag

20 pitch (or even 24 pitch) aluminum spur gears. 3/8" or preferably 1/2" face width.

Rino is the only place I've found that has what I'm looking for, but I still need to find out their price.

Berg has only 16 pitch as far as I know

SDP-SI has 24 pitch but only in 3/16" face width.

Let me know if you know of anywhere that has them.

[Travis Covington]

You want to be careful with Aluminum gears. You would probably want to use 7075 or 2024 aluminum, and hard anodize, or preferably titanium anodize the gears. From what we were told in the past, tiodizing creates a hardened surface without increasing the parts dimensions (as hard anodizing does). Just something to take note of, as we have been looking into the same thing.

[Tristan Lall]

By the way, the hard anodizing process on some aluminum gears is applied before cutting the gear teeth, not after. Don't count on getting any extra surface durability on the teeth itself, when you order off-the-shelf anodized gears.

I haven't used it, but I think that Travis is referring to the Ematal process of titanium anodizing; I've heard good things about it. Look in an ASM Handbook for details on the process.