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Tools, Glorious Tools! #10 (Part 4) - Shop Made Gear Cutters - Making 'Cycloidal' Cutters

🕑 Added 2020-08-23 20:27:07 +0000 UTC

Comments

Adam Gill Creations

For the cycloidal wheel & pinion cutting, I think I will make a button cutter and use one side only, and offset by 2 deg as explained ... Gives me an excuse to make all the jigs & fixtures ... Excellent gear calculator sheet!

Rod Cole

Chris, when making the four faces on the cutter with the end-mill I see the one dimension to be on line with the center of the cutter, but I can't find a reference to depth of cut with the end-mill, it looks to be about in line with the indexing hole center but I'm not sure of this. Maybe it's not critical.

Rod Cole

I can't find the "T" Tooth Cycloidal Wheel that you have in the green heading. With some help from a Lodge Brother I got the excel spread sheet to open in my MacBook Air but now I can't find the cycloidal department. I'm looking to make the gears for the Skeleton clock~. Never mind, I found it - I was beginning to feel stupid, and did some more looking - low and behold, there it was!!!

Clickspring

Hello mate, yes send a pic to chris@clickspringprojects.com and I'll see what's up - Cheers :)

Eric Maillet

Hello Chris, I am still having an issue with the excel file, and now I can't get my infeed values. Is there another way for me to calculate them? My lathe is all zeroed in, if you know what I mean. I took a screenshot if you want to see. I think the columns are not wide enough for all the numbers. Thanks!

Clickspring

Be sure also to use decimal point rather than a comma for the decimal - Cheers :)

Eric Maillet

Hey Chris, thanks for your reply. It doesn’t show as a number. It gives me a VALUE! alert. I’ll check the file. Might be a version issue. Thanks again!!

Clickspring

Hi Eric, the 'Fillet radius r' (for round bottom cutters) is the value you are looking for, its the field just below the 'Number of Teeth T'. This radius is also illustrated on the section view sketch so you can visualise it - Cheers :)

Eric Maillet

Hi Chris, Sharpening tool done, cutting arbor done, cutter blank done. So far so good. I am starting work on my buttons for the form tool. I need to cut Module 0,148 , 70 tooth mainspring barrel for a watch. Calculations in your excel sheet work fine except I cannot get a round bottom radius value because the sheet does not give me one. Does that mean I cannot cut a round bottom? It doesn't really matter in the end since the meshing will work fine, but I just wanted to make sure I had the numbers right.

Clickspring

Hello mate, yes I think that is the name - Cheers :)

Seán Ó Fearghail

Hi Chris, Thank you so much for doing theses. It is fantastic! is that what you would call a cone runner, coming from the tail stock to steady the pinion at around 16mins in?

Reed Bowman

You should totally try using your brass gear cutter to cut aluminum. I mean, if copper chisels work on stone...

Karl Mansson

Very Nice! I've been looking for an approachable way to make multi tooth cutters for a while! I think you would get a better finish on the working profiles of your teeth if you honed the profiles of the cutter teeth as well. After all, it is that profile that will be imparted on the work.

Clickspring

Cheers John :)

Clickspring

Cheers mate!

John S Dilsaver

This is really interesting and encouraging. My machining skills are pretty basic, but I would like to be able to produce some gears at some point. You make it seem possible! Thanks!

Joris van 't Land

Another excellent, informative video Chris! Every time looking forward to a new film. Thank you so much!

Chris Schmedding

Thanks Chris I will look in to it.

Clickspring

Hi Chris, I get it from Ian Cobb in the UK: http://www.clockmaking-brass.co.uk/en8_steel.htmL - Cheers :)

Chris Schmedding

Hi Chris , where do you source your EN8 from if I may ask ?

Clickspring

Hi David, it depends a bit on the broader style of the mechanism - if its a highly finished device (but electoplating is not intended), then my preference is to get the parts to a highly polished state using Bill Smith's Rub-n-brite polish, and then simply leave them. Providing the surface is kept meticulously clean (free of fingerprints etc) then it will slowly form a nice dark patina. If the device is a little more 'everyday' with a brushed finish, then something like Renaissance wax is good. Again it slows and regulates the patination into something quite nice and uniform. The other option is electroplating with an inert metal like gold or rhodium - Cheers :)

David Few

Hey Chris asan aside, when making clock wheels, once they are polished what coating do you give them so they keep their lustre?

Clickspring

Its a really hard question to answer Benjamin, because it depends on so many factors that will be different for each user - However personally, I use both my commercial and shop made cutters regularly for typical home shop work: one off projects, repairs, doing work for friends etc. Assuming that I look after them properly I do not expect to have to either re-purchase, or re-make a given cutter ever - Cheers :)

Clickspring

Thank you!

Clickspring

Very pleased you enjoyed it mate! I may look at the Eureka tool in the future, but its not a priority at the moment. This method will sort out the cutter costs of most typical home shop projects, and it has the benefit of being very straight forward for even someone quite new to machining to implement - Cheers :)

Clickspring

Its a bit of both - this short series has been on the to-do list forever, but the next few years of projects pretty much requires that I get it done now - Cheers :)

Clickspring

Yes I was aware that he had passed away - I never knew him directly, but like so many of the engineering writers of his calibre, I felt like I knew him from his work. His writing on technical matters is outstanding. Accurate, informative, economically written and easily applied. I very much wish I had had the chance to meet him in person.

Benjamin Marn

Great video! You mentioned that these shop made cutters should last about as long as a commercially made one if cared for properly. On average, how long exactly is that? In short, how often would one need to go through the trouble of making these?

rfproject

Another superb video. My favourite YouTube channel without question.

Tor Halsan

Great to see another excellent video from you, especially on such an interesting topic. Have you considered diving even deeper into gear cutters and do a series on the Eureka form relief tool?

Terence Dixon

I note that you make reference to John Stevenson's excellent web pages above. I don't know if you know but John died last year I 'knew' John through various forums and exchanged messages. He could appear rather cantankerous but was helpful and generally courteous if treated with respect but didn't suffer fools gladly.

Terence Dixon

Hi Chris,

Justus Dehegovit

Awesome to know. Cheers, Chris!

Thomas

I’m curious, are you making these tools for a future project, or just adding to your arsenal of cutting tools and showing how you make them?

Benjamin Marn

Which, for my fellow Americans, translates to 6pm EST, 5pm Central, etc etc. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself :)

Clickspring

Ah terrific, that is a huge reduction in work, well done. I am still working on the new platform - its taking a lot longer to build than I had hoped, but it is progressing. I will certainly let you know when it is ready for you to use - Cheers :)

Justus Dehegovit

Hi Chris, thanks for the reply. The reason I wrote my initial comment was because I applied the theory you thought us in these videos onto my Astronomical clock project. The clock features 19 wheels, the lowest tooth count being 17, with almost every gear having a unique tooth count and size. Even when you apply the commercial involute cutter ranges, for these 19 wheels I would still need to make 15 involute cutters. On the contrary, if I made these gears cycloidal, which follows the original plans, I would only need 7 different cutters. Thats quite the difference. By the way, was the website for plans we talked about already announced or did it still need tweaking?

Clickspring

Hello mate - Yes on the Cycloidal wheels only requiring the one cutter across the entire count range of 17 up to a rack, and yes pinions are a little more difficult but still fairly straight forward. For the Involutes you can certainly do a unique cutter for each count if you want to, but its not essential. It would be quite reasonable to take the same approach as we do for commercial involute cutters where a set of cutters span the full range, and each individual cutter accounts for a specific section of the range - for example a #6 cuts gears with counts 35 to 54 teeth, a #7 cuts 55 to 134 etc - Cheers :)

Clickspring

8am AEST on Mondays - catch you then Iain :)

Clickspring

Cheers mate :)

Clickspring

Cheers Erick :)

Clickspring

Hi Michael, yes I think I cover most of that here: https://youtu.be/bcfn28L2Jtw - Cheers :)

Justus Dehegovit

So for Involute wheels, you would have to make a cutter (shank and pair of cutter buttons) for every wheel that has its own individual tooth count and size. Also pinion cutting is difficult (can you even make involute pinions?). Whereas in cycloidal tooth gears, as long as you only make wheels and no pinions, you can use one cutter for every tooth count, as long as it is the same tooth size/module. Pinions are a little bit more difficult, but also possible. This is interesting for clock gear trains, where gears often have to share coaxial shafts so many gear pairs come not only with their individual tooth counts, but also individual modules to manage the shared shafts!

Iain Deas

Im sure I’m not the only dummy in the group but what time is the discord chat in Aussie time?

Kevin Reardon

Good to hear that voice again. Also, showing me how to properly cut gears at home. Next, SteamPunk gear!

Emalkartha

Brilliant.

Michael Lloyd

Very nice! Did you do a video showing the indexer at the back of the lathe and the "spinny bits" on the carriage?

Clickspring

Thank you mate, so pleased you're enjoying them :)

Robert D

TGT is ever so satisfying Chris.... Well Done.

Justin J.

Ah, great, thank you. It looks so, well beautiful and clean, in the video. Makes sense, compressor oil is nice and light, See you. 👍🏼

Clickspring

I use a generic compressor oil - nothing fancy, just the sort you can pick up at any auto shop - Cheers :)

Clickspring

Thank you mate!

Justin J.

Hey Chris, if you don't mind me asking, what sort of cutting oil are you using when you machine the cutters? Or if it's already been mentioned maybe direct me to the right place? Thanks!