HPGL CAD and Planetary gearing?

[chuckknight]

I have recently been reading up on planetary gearing systems, and was wondering if anyone had ever implemented them into a clock?  They offer several benefits, including extremely high gear ratios in a very small package.

The "dance" of the planet gears within the annulus is fun to watch, too.

So, has anyone built anything like this?  I'd hate to think that I'm blazing new ground.

Chuck

[rabbit]

my "Strutt" and "Station Clock" use planetary gearing (see my 'website'), as well as several other wooden machines i've built.
planetary gearing is very cool. the ratio analysis can be confusing, and cutting the internal gear profile is somewhat tricky.

[chuckknight]

One of my customers has an Epilog LASER cutter, and an interest in my project.  Cutting the gears won't be a problem. 

:-)

Generating the toolpath, on the other hand, may cause a few issues.  I know about the woodgears.ca site, and it will generate every gear we need, including the annulus.  BUT its output is in HPGL.  Neither of us has a CAD program more sophisticated than ProGE, so we can't handle HPGL.  Anyone know of a converter that would work, between HPGL and DXF/DWG?  Most (all?) of the gear generators that output directly to DXF can't do annulus gears.

Chuck

[steve323]

I use the woodgears.ca site to generate the basic profile and load it into TurboCAD.  It comes in as a sequence of many many small straight line segments, so I usually re-generate a similar profile to reduce the number of cuts.  I like being able to add my own splines in the shapes that I want. 

Initially, I used TurboCAD just to place several gears from woodgears.ca on one sheet and cut them without any aditional cleanup.  TurboCAD outputs in DXF format.

A search for "hpgl to dxf converter" turns up a few hits, although many of them appear to be programs for sale.  I wouldn't pay much for a converter when you can buy TurboCAD Deluxe v15 for about US$79 and older versions for even cheaper.  v14 sells for US$39 and v12 sells for US$19 on Amazon.  I use v12 and it works just fine.

Steve

[chuckknight]

TurboCAD is pretty neat, and affordably priced.  But, I live out in the sticks, and can't quickly get to a store that would sell it...either that, or I have to wait for a mail order package to be delivered.

Instead, I just downloaded a free program called DoubleCAD-XT at http://doublecad.com/Products/DoubleCADXT/tabid/1100/Default.aspx

It directly loads HPGL code, and should be perfect for me, and for all of our efforts.  Maybe finding this can be my first contribution to the group!

Chuck

[appance09]

Just send the above link to Camskill and see what they can do mate