Simplicity Gears

thingiverse

A friend of mine was creating a computer program and needed a physical aid to visualize gear movements. He requested this be printed as soon as my printer arrived in May of 2016. I honored this request, thinking such a simple mechanical device as a gear should not be challenging. But I was wrong to an extent. The failure was a simple one; I foolishly lowered the temperature of the hotend to the point where the extrusion stopped altogether. Not to be deterred and running out of time in the early hours of the morning, I pulled the plug. I removed the gears as they were and they looked pretty cool with the exposed honeycomb infill. I mounted them to a blank 1/2" plywood box that I had laying around using finishing nails. Placing them in such a random way proved to have an interesting effect when one expects the lines to line up at some point in the future. The effect is that they appear to be in chaos; randomly turning without returning to the original spot. Interestingly enough, the chaos theory is a heavily debated and ultimately unfinished mathematical equation which attempts to drill down to the most finite deterministic factors in a system to derive the result one seeks. This is the true idea behind the more fun sounding "butterfly effect." As such, I have found it useful in helping my son develop a conceptually sound understanding of this theory's implications. Enjoy it for yourself, complete the print if you like or stop it midway, perhaps a butterfly will flap in Indonesia as you print this and it will randomly fail, forcing your gears to have an exposed infill as well. Printer Settings: Printer: Prusa i3 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: 0.20 mm Infill: Choose a percentage above 20% for a smoother top layer. Notes: Simplicity and failure can still be fun. Making the Gears Spin: Mount these to multiple substrates! Arrange them in any order you like! Each gear has a simple structure, and all of the gears will mesh with one another. Randomness is the name of the game; enjoy!