Cutting my first gear

Oh no, test gear 2, I got a tooth wrong! I must have given it an extra turn. How upsetting. Ruined my morning 😞😠🥺

You can't call yourself a gear cutter until you've done that. Incidentally, you're cutting the spaces between the teeth not the teeth themselves.

Roy

Well, it turned out the chuck had come loose, so I’m not feeling quite so stupid. I guess it’s a very vibration intensive operation, and the chuck doesn’t have the natural turning forces of a lathe to keep it tight. Also the rear T nut holding the dividing head had come loose.

so a learning experience, it’s a throw away workpiece…. Luckily.

When something like that goes wrong, you do doubt your ability to count!

Until you find that something has come loose, or the directions that you were given were wrong. (Someone, not me, misreading a nine as a zero was my downfall. Took a week to find out that that one!. )

Keep on trying!

Howard

I did what you said…. Not perfect, but works!

If it will help to keep the chuck tight on the spindle, rotating the blank for the next tooth in the direction that tightens the chuck, to take out any backlash, MAY help.

It is taken as read that everything else is locked whilst the cut is being taken.

You are doing the right thing by experimenting and gaining experience on spare material, rather than on an expensive, or irreplaceable part! Fortunately, when I found the errors, the material could be replaced, so all in all, it was a useful learning curve.

Howard

Exactly Howard, this was a nice little thing to try with bits of scrap lying about, It didn’t cost a penny, unlike pretty much everything else I seem to do!