Planetary Herringbone Wave Gear

thingiverse

I've updated my software, Solidworks 2013, but unfortunately, it's not calculating helix angles correctly. I've confirmed this with a friend who has access to 2018, and when I get my hands on that version, I'll try to fix these files. Currently, the ring gear helix is producing a shallow angle and intersecting the other gears. I'll have to manually tweak the helix angle to create one that functions properly. Here's a concept for a rounded tooth gear in a helical planetary arrangement. I couldn't find what these sorts of gears were called, so I came up with a name - Wave Gears - because the tooth form is very much like a sine wave, although it's not symmetrical from top to bottom. This design should be printable in one shot fully assembled, with enough clearance for the gears to move. I'm excited to try this out and see how it works. The first file has sun=20, planet=20, ring=60, while the second file has sun=12, planet=12, ring=36. I've been trying to print v2 and v3, but so far, they're not quite working as expected. V3 doesn't have enough tooth clearance and keeps merging the teeth, while v2 is a bit too flexible and may have too much internal clearance. Both designs could probably benefit from being made taller and possibly having a bit more tooth angle. The current tooth angle is 25°, so I might try experimenting with a 35° tooth angle as well. The Solidworks file isn't very flexible right now because I had to calculate the twist independently for each configuration. This will be resolved in the future, and once I find some good configurations, they'll be saved as complete STL files. V3.5 has increased internal clearances and features on the outer ring to help with gear stacks and locking the outer ring. V4 is a 35° face angle and a 1/2" thick version of v3.5 - I think this one could be the best yet! Can't wait to try it out!