Replacing defective gears is often not easy. After all, in many cases the gear wheel to be replaced is no longer mass-produced. A special one-off production turns out to be not economical. 3D printing offers a remedy for this problem in particular.
We have therefore collected some information on the subject of 3D printing of gears at this point.
Contents
Construction or replica?
The most important step before 3D printing is of course the provision of 3D files. This raises a fundamental question: Do you want to rebuild a defective gear, as in the example above? Then you may still have design drawings of the gear that can easily be converted into printable 3D files. If you do not have such plans, it is advisable to first scan the defective gear in order to obtain CAD files for 3D printing from the scan data.
The case is of course completely different if you want to design a new gear wheel. In this case, it is advisable to use online configurators, which you can easily find on the web.
Material selection
Of course, one of the fundamental decisions before 3D manufacturing gears is the choice of the right material. After all, it is in the nature of gears that they should be as wear resistant should be. In addition, one naturally wants to ensure the longest possible service life.
Depending on the type of intended use, it can also be of crucial importance whether you want the gear you want to have in plastic or metal. If the planned use does not necessarily require a metal gear wheel, it should be borne in mind that 3D printing with plastic can be implemented much more cost-effectively than with metal.
iglidur 13 convinces with improved properties
At this point, iglidur 13 should be mentioned as a suitable material for 3D printing plastic gears. This material, which can be processed using selective laser sintering (SLS printing), has been available since 2017 and has since contributed to an even longer service life of moving applications (such as gears) from the 3D printer.
Lifetime calculation tool
For almost a year (May 2019) there has even been an online tool for calculating the service life of gears from the 3D printer.
First, the user has to enter the number of teeth, the width and the tooth module of the gear pair in the online tool. The user can choose between igidur 13, another plastic or metal. In the next step, the tool asks for the speed and torque of the large or small gear – depending on which gear the values are from. In the last step, the user must specify the duty cycle of the printed gear, the mode of operation, the ambient temperature and the safety factor. Based on these parameters, the online tool can now determine the service life of the 3D printed gear, within seconds. The ingenious thing about it: The maintenance of the gear wheel can be planned in advance.