Thought you might like to see what i have been playing with ?

Art Fenerty, the writer of Mach3 has been writing a new program for cutting gears.
http://www.gearotic.com

I have been working with him sorting out the spur and helical gears side to it,

Where this program scores is that it can cut a gear with a normal off the shelf end mill, no special cutters needed.

These were cut using just a 3mm end mill.

Attachment 3162

Today, first paying job was to make this bent and broken pinion gear.

Attachment 3163


Into this.

Attachment 3164

Done with a 1.5mm cutter.

Nice work John...Makes me want to throw my dividing head away.

Very nice.
The gears in the 1st photo are the same ones from the youtube video? Mesmerising to watch :)

I'm just wondering wouldthose slitting saw blades work with this? they go from 0.5 to 3mm wide and are cheap to buy.

If they had side cutting teeth then yes they would work but it would have to be done on a CNC horizontal mill because the program works the offsets out in Y and A

To use a slitting saw on a vertical it would have to be rewritten to use Z and A

Another disadvantage is that because of the larger diameter it would not be possible to work up to a shoulder or larger gear, however this would be offset by the cutters being a lot stronger.


[Edit] another disavantage is that you wouldn't be able to do helicals