Occasionally I'm using 3D printed involute gears in my personal projects with up to moderate load. I have no issue modeling my gears, I model them by hand in Autodesk Inventor (although the program hates me for it).
My problem is that the method I'm using to calculate them was developed for metal gears. I have to guess some characteristics to bridge the gap and that introduces an unpredictability and oversizing. Furthermore the printer settings itself allow improvements in performance, like does a smaller layer height increase surface overlap?
I'm looking for quantitative answers in this topic, like online guidelines and research papers. I could create them myself, but if somebody already put in the work before me, then I don't want to reinvent the wheel.
Following points intereset me:
- Characteristics/influence factors of various filament materials and print setups in relation to gear load capacity, operating life and performance.
- Recommended slicer setting for optimal results.
- Failure analysis of longtime operating gears for various materials.
- Quantitative comparison of different filament materials in various price ranges.
- Useful post processing to improve the gears.
If some of these are not at all researched yet, I'd like to do my own experiments.