Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

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ramblur
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Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2017 10:34 pm

Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by ramblur »

Hello all,

I recently started playing around with FC Gear and I'm very impressed with it. Thanks for all your work on this looo! I've run in to a difficulty with making an internal gear for a planetary gear system, however (see screenshot). The steps I take to get this far are:
  1. create Body (Part Design WB)
  2. make sketch (circle) and pad (Part Design WB)
  3. make involute gear with beta = 30 degree, and double helix = true (Gear WB)
  4. select gear and use Boolean Cut operation (Part Design WB)
If I pad the circle to the same length as the gear, I get the spurious faces on the both ends of the cylinder. If I pad the circle to less than the gear length, then I only have the spurious face on the x-y plane.

Lastly, I don't have this problem for straight, non-helical gears. Using a single helix (i.e. not a herringbone), I get the spurious face on just one side, away from the x-y plane.

I'm using the FreeCAD AppImage on an up-to-date Arch system (installing FreeCAD is presently difficult to impossible on Arch).

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers,
-R
Screenshot_2019-12-29_10-23-34.png
Screenshot_2019-12-29_10-23-34.png (144.08 KiB) Viewed 2084 times
chrisb
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by chrisb »

Looks like a rounding issue. In FreeCAD it is sensible to avoid coplanar faces for cuts anyway so you should make the object to be cut a bit larger than necessary anyway.
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ramblur
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by ramblur »

chrisb wrote: Sun Dec 29, 2019 6:32 pm Looks like a rounding issue. In FreeCAD it is sensible to avoid coplanar faces for cuts anyway so you should make the object to be cut a bit larger than necessary anyway.
Thanks for the information; I didn't know that there were issues with co-planar surfaces and boolean operations. I never had this problem with Involute Gear in Part Design, but you make a good point and it's easy enough to design around the potential problem.

Cheers,
-R
ramblur
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Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2017 10:34 pm

Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by ramblur »

Another question:
When I enter a beta angle to make an involute gear a helical gear, it seems that the whole gear gets bigger. This is reflected in an increased pitch diameter (computed value 'dw' in the Data tab). In the attached screenshot, both gears are the default involute gear generated by clicking the 'Involute gear' button in the Gear workbench, except that the one on the right has been beta = 45 degrees. dw for the default gear is 15 (I assume mm), and is 21.21 for the helical version (screenshots of the Data tabs for each also attached).

Why does this happen? I thought a helical gear was just an involute profile swept along a helix, so the increased size of the gear is very surprising. Is this expected behaviour, or a bug? If it's a known bug, is there a work around? I'm designing some herringbone gears and I could use the Part Design + Parts workbenches work flow of Involute Gear -> Helix -> Sweep -> Mirror, but it would be nice to do everything in the Gears workbench if possible.

(I'm using the FreeCAD AppImage in Arch linux, in case that makes a difference)

Thanks,
-R
Screenshot_2019-12-29_20-26-06.png
Screenshot_2019-12-29_20-26-06.png (68.72 KiB) Viewed 2021 times
Data tab for the default gear:
Screenshot_2019-12-29_20-28-34.png
Screenshot_2019-12-29_20-28-34.png (35.6 KiB) Viewed 2021 times
Data tab for the helical gear:
Screenshot_2019-12-29_20-29-06.png
Screenshot_2019-12-29_20-29-06.png (36.2 KiB) Viewed 2021 times
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looo
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by looo »

ramblur wrote: Mon Dec 30, 2019 4:31 am Why does this happen? I thought a helical gear was just an involute profile swept along a helix, so the increased size of the gear is very surprising. Is this expected behaviour, or a bug?
It's by design. The used module is the module of the tool to produce the involute which is the same rack-profile for straight and helical gear. The only difference is that the tool of the helical gear is rotated by beta.
Defining gears this way makes sense for gears produced by cutting with racks or involute profiles. It doesn't make too much sense for printed gears.
ramblur
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by ramblur »

Thank you for the information, looo, and also for all your work on the Gear workbench.

Cheers,
-R
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Kunda1
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by Kunda1 »

FCGear Workbench has been modernized but is still incomplete. Are there any people interested in documenting it?
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bavariaSHAPE
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by bavariaSHAPE »

Kunda1 wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2020 10:10 pm FCGear Workbench has been modernized but is still incomplete. Are there any people interested in documenting it?
What should be documented?
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Kunda1
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by Kunda1 »

bavariaSHAPE wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:55 am What should be documented?
Each command has a page with Description and Usage sections. There is also a section that can be dedicated just for Properties (the ones in the Property editor). And then perhaps a Notes section along with a Limitations section.
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bavariaSHAPE
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Re: Gears in FreeCAD: FC Gear

Post by bavariaSHAPE »

Kunda1 wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 2:00 pm
bavariaSHAPE wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:55 am What should be documented?
Each command has a page with Description and Usage sections. There is also a section that can be dedicated just for Properties (the ones in the Property editor). And then perhaps a Notes section along with a Limitations section.
OK, that means the external workbench FC Gear and the linked pages must be filled first.
Well, that would not be the problem. So far I only translated existing english websites into german.

Since I missed some information myself, I uploaded a selfmade clip to YouTube to understand the workbench better.

Is there perhaps a tutorial how I could approach the handling of the website. I don't want to break a website again, when I started to translating. @NormandC has helped me at that time.

Basically, I would like to help to bring the cool things of FreeCAD closer to people in an understandable way.
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