Blended Learning Week 4

Learning outcome
At the end of the exercise, you will be able to construct the profile of a gear.

Instruction

Understand first what an involute curve is. It is a curve obtained by attaching a taut string
to a base circle and tracing its free end as it is unwound from the base circle.
Using AutoCAD package you can create involute gear teeth.

The procedure:
 Draw the addendum circle, base circle, pitch circle and the dedendum circle with
a common centre.
 Draw a vertical line OA from the centre to the base circle.

 Polar array the line AC at 3o to 5o interval.

Using the trim command, obtain an arc and measure its length.
(Measuring arc length
Click on the arc length icon in annotate.
Click on the arc and move the mouse above the arc to place the dimension.)
  Type the command lengthen

Type p for percent

Type 200 if you want the length to be twice as long.
(So, the tangential length of the 0th line will be 0, the tangential length of the 1st
line will be 100% x arc length, the tangential length of the 2nd line will be 200%
x arc length and so on. Similarly the tangential length of the 14th line will be
1400% x arc length.)
Select by clicking on one end of the line you wish to change
(The ghosted part is the part that will remain stationary)

Join the end points of each line by a smooth SPLINE fit curve and you will get the
involute AI as below

 Now, trim the involute curve beyond the addendum circle.

 The involute intersects the pitch circle at point P. Draw the line Radially, construct a
mirror line at an angle away by ¼ times the angular pitch. Now mirror the involute
curve about the mirror line
 Between the base circle and the dedendum circle, the profile can be straight. Add in
the fillet radius.
 Now trim the unnecessary lines and you can see one involute gear tooth. Polar array
the tooth around the pitch circle and you will see the involute gear.