3D printing of gears

Is it possible to 3D print a stub tooth helical gear in a tough oil resistant plastic?

Nylon 6 and Acetal are both A rated for Petroleum Oils resistance and can both be 3D Printed, it would be worth checking with Taulman as the the suitability of their Bridge Nylon for your project as it does print very easily and smoothly in comparison to other Nylon filaments,
Regards,
Nick

I've experimented with Taulman Nylon and it is quite a challenging material to get the settings right and good adhesion but the result was very tough.

It should be strong enough if well printed this graph suggest a well oriented print will be almost as strong as injection moulding as long as it isn't distorted much. In practical terms, if overloaded the injection moulded part will fail by distorting but the printed one will break apart.

www.sculpteo.com/blog/2014/05/14/right-plastic-production-method-part-3/

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 15/12/2017 08:33:10

Thank you for replies. I now need to find someone to print a pair for me!

That's after you find someone to draw the gears first. Suppose they could also be CNC cut with a 4th axis machine but you would still need the drawing.

A few years ago a fellow club member drew out (via Matlab, if I recall correctly) a 43 tooth Module 1 involute gear, for using on one of my lathes that had a metric feedscrew and change gears.

It was printed in Nylon, at his place of work (with permission), on a commercial 3D printer.

It worked out really well. At the end of the run, other than a bit of grease/oil on it, you'd never have known that it had been used. We had expected it to be destroyed, but, nope!

JohnS.

A Google search for " DXF involute gear" throws up a number of different options for import into a cad program.

HTH,

Rod

Hello vintage engineer.

I know virtually nothing about 3D printing of nylon. I have however a small amount of experience with injection moulding of a range of plastics.

Before moulding nylon it was necessary to blow/heat dry the nylon to remove the moisture content. Failure to do so would result in a steam blow back in the screw /barrel. how true it is I don't know but I have heard that barrels could explode. Whilst a 3D printer does not have a barrel as such, it would seem sense for the nylon to be dryed before printing to help with the integrity of the printed part. then put the finished part in a bucket of water for a few hours to regain its toughness before use.

I hope this is relevant

Anna

Very relevant, it is essential that nylon filament is dry to get decent prints. I had to dry my nylon filament in a low oven for a few hours.

Neil

I dry Nylon filament at a measured filament material temperature of 80 Centigrade for four hours and once cooled to 30 Centigrade transfer it to sealed containers with moisture absorbent packs, filament is fed directly from the storage containers through PTFE tube to the extruder avoiding contact with atmospheric moisture.