Gear Making Information

[Andy Baker]

Alan,

Although Joe is correct by saying that it is difficult to cut an involute on a mill, I suggest you try anyway... hey, it's worth a shot.

From my experience, steel gears can still get a decent mesh, even with inprecise involutes or while being slightly stripped. We've cut gears with not-so-good meshes before, and just wore them into meshing better. A few thousand RPM and some grease... voila... an OK gear mesh. We did this in '99, and it seemed to work OK. These semi-stripped OK meshing gears are still on our TKO robot.

Last year, we cut a pair of delrin gears (32 pitch) on a mill using a right angle indexing head. Although these were not steel, they were made fairly easily. Of course, steel gears would be harder to make, but I'm sure that the Professor could figure it out.

Also... since you're stuck on that island, you've got plenty of time on your hands for tinkering with steel gears.

One thing I'm wondering... why don't you just use some of Mr. Howell's money and buy yourself an EDM?

Good luck,
Andy B.