I was trying to find someone that has made this on YouTube but could not seem to find anything. Has anyone created a setup to allow for cutting gears on the X-Carve? It is typically done with an extra axis. Where the gear cutting tool is mounted in a spindle similar to a mill but also has a similar set up to a lathe that allows for indexing around the part. I was hoping someone could share their setup if any has created such a thing!
V Carve also has a gear cutting widget.
You can also quite successfully cut (some) gears simply by importing a suitable pattern. For example many of us have made wooden, metal and plastic clocks using little more than a “gear-shaped” pattern rather than cutting them in the ‘traditional’ way with a dividing head etc.
How small of gears are able to be machined in Easel? I have some RC trucks and I wanted to machine custom pinion gears for my motor. As well as some spur gears for the transmission. I was going to try aluminum. But if aluminum isn’t strong enough I have a foundry furnace that I could cast a stronger metal made from an aluminum gear as the model if petrobond can detail the teeth well enough. The pinion on my motor is maybe 3/8" and 12 teeth.
I’m not an easel user, so someone else may need to chip in, but if you’re cutting gears from a pattern (ie - cutting them side-on), the limiting size is probably going to be the diameter of the bit you’re using rather than any limitation within the program.
For example with a 2mm bit, the smallest distance between adjacent teeth cannot be less than 2mm. Having said that, I’ve successfully cut 12 tooth wooden pinion gears for a clock that were only about ½" across.
‘Proper’ gears such as what you seem to be describing are usually not cut “from the side”, they’re often cut a tooth at a time with a shaped cutter, and the gear is rotated as necessary. Not something easily done with this type of machine.
Another option for you is to look at some of the model making and mechatronics gear now available online. Lots of very accurate and very cheap gears, pinions, drives and gearboxes can be had for only a few dollars.
The biggest issue with pinion gears, bevel gears and especially small gears pretty much is the tooling you want to get a $5 end mill from China is going to snap trying to do something really small like a gear tooth on a bevel. So far most people make flat gears on the Xcarve, I have done a gear out of thicker wood cut the teeth then put the bevel on it but as in RC small I am not sure the precision of a small CNC is going to cut it. I worked in a gear machine shop for a couple years and the tooling they used was probably from the 50’s or earlier - most gear shops moved on to super multi axis cnc’s that run in the millions due to the precision needed. I thought most of the gears these days on RC cars made of plastic possibly some aluminum but I am no expert. The gearing you want to design would be more like Fusion 360 Easle is not really set up for making more than a standard flat gear.