Earth Gears

thingiverse

An experiment that could use improvement, this model works but its spherical shape makes it difficult to handle. Gears are effectively turned using parts derived from an excellent source. The design is now available on Github (https://github.com/bld/Earth-Gears) for further exploration. For better performance, use Tony Buser's pins (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10288) and Greg Frost's involute gear library in OpenSCAD. Generating STL files may take time due to the high number of polygons involved. To simplify the process, modify the Screwless Heart Gear .scad file to accept command line parameters for part generation. Use the following command: openscad -D part=X -o earthgears_X.stl earthgears.scad, where X represents the gear number from 1-8. For the center and pins, run openscad -D part=9 -o earthgears_center.stl and openscad -D part=10 -o earthgears_pins.stl respectively. If you want a complete STL for visualization purposes, use openscad -D part=11 -o earthgears_complete.stl earthgears.scad. However, note that these commands may take long to execute and consume significant RAM, so it's recommended to have ample processing power and memory available.