precisionmetal

Hello all,

New to this forum. I'm in California, and my passion (as well as job part of the time) is wire edm work. Specifically, I enjoy developing and cutting gears via wire edm. Solving gear-related design problems or reverse engineering replacement gears is my forte. Needless to say, I also cut many things via wire edm that have nothing to do with gears at all.

Am always happy to help if I can provide anyone with geometry, CAD models, or anything else pertaining to gears.

A few photos of some fun stuff:

Photos 1 and 2 are of a 34 tooth 140 DP 20° PA gear, with a 9 tooth 80 DP 45° PA internal spline. This gear was cut from solid carbide.

Photo 3 is a 40 DP 20° PA pinion which was cut complete including the D-shaped bore from heat treated 440C.

Photo 4 is 2 Module 20° PA gear that was a replacement for a broken gear in an Italian-made wine bottle corking machine.

Photo 5 is 64 DP 20° PA ring gear cut from heat treated 15-5 stainless for a prototype planetary gear set in a small robotic vehicle.











Pete

Powder keg

Nice work Pete!!! I've built a couple of gears. My 1935 LeBlond was missing a few teeth. The small one was fun. It had about a 5/8" 6 spline in the middle and the OD on the gear was about 1.125" if I remember right.

Thanks for sharing)

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Wesley P

Idaho:o)

A Gismo ??? If it has a flywheel or spins and is made with small parts. I'll take one! If it makes noise, moves, or requires frequent oiling and dusting it's a better deal yet. It's especially right if its shiny and bright.

ChooChooMike

Those are some complex EDM calculations - very nice

A warm welcome to HMEM Pete !!

Mike

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A member of Southern California Home Shop Machinists club :D

John S

Pete,
What gear software do you use ?

John S.

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John Stevenson [ was JohnS the 3rd.]

Nottingham, England

precisionmetal

Thanks for the welcome here!

John,

I use a few different programs when creating a gear profile -- most everything (other than a CAD and a CAM program) is custom written.

vlmarshall

Great stuff. I keep wishing for a wire EDM at work... no luck yet.

__________________
Chesapeake, Virginia, USA, Northern Hemisphere, Earth, Sol system, Orion Spur, Milky Way.

Sherline 5400 mill, Xylotex drivers and EMC controller
Sherline 4400 lathe, Gecko drivers and EMC controller

doc1955

Welcome
I'm pretty new here too. I have enjoyed setting back reading and taking note. Where I work we do very little with gear cutting I have done a few but not that small. I'm very impressed. We have a wire edm here we had a sinker edm but have gotten rid of it.
Do you work with cad now?
If so which cad system do you use? I use to work in the tooling shop but now work as a tool design engineer. I use NX6 and CATIA V5 and also FeatureCam or now known as DelCam.

1hand

Real nice Pete. Kinda gives me a headache trying to imagine working with stuff that small. Welcome.

precisionmetal

Doc,

I've used a number of different CAD apps, but have to say that anything by Ashlar is probably my favorite.

Of course there is always the old saying: "What's the best CAD program in the world? ..... the one you're most familiar with!".


1Hand,

I enjoy making small parts, I admit. I have yet to really push the limits on size -- I think I might be able to go to 200 DP on gears, but may have to have the moon in the right position before I can pull that off! The small gear above (first two photos) was cut using 70 micron wire (.0028"). That's already 30% smaller than my machine is rated for, but with a bit of tweaking I've had some pretty good success with that size wire. I've actually run 50 micron wire in my machine before, but it will take more work to get that to run reliably. The tension and power settings get so low with wire that small that everything has to be "babied" to pull it off.

Here's another small part I made (I think I made about 25 of these). Looks simple... but this customer required every dimension to be ±.0001". I had the material centerless ground to ±.000050", then sliced off the "discs" in the wire machine. Then wire cut a fixture right in place and never moved anything -- inserted the blanks and cut them.

Fun stuff!

But I have to say that some of the model engines I've seen on this site make anything like this look trivial. There are some phenomenally talented people here, and I'm really enjoying going through some of the posts and reading about what's been built.

doc1955

You are right with the saying I've heard that before. The reason I was asking is I usually attend except for this year the Seimens UG users groop meetings and though maybe by chance you used UG and attended also. Year before last it was in LongBeach CA matter fact 2 years in a row. Last year it was in Nashville and next year again in Nashville.
Anyway I'm totally amazed we run .005 wire dia. I don't believe we run any other dia.
I've never got to run the wire edm machine but have designed several holding fixtures for them.

Simply impressive!