I am a beginner machinist. I am trying to make racing gears. I did some research and found out that a company makes them on a laser cutting machine. Would this be the most effective way of making a gear that is about 3/16 thick and with about 65 teeth on it made out of either aluminum or titanium

thanks for your help

I doubt that they would be good enough quality, but then, things change all the time.

Try Sterling Instrument for tiny gears.

Water jet quality would not be appropriate for all but the crudest gears. I have used wire edm to make some very high quality gears. With either water jet or wire edm you may have to consider programming issues. Most production gears are made by shaving or hobbing on specialized dedicated machines. Another method is with the proper cutter form on a milling machine. this requires an indexer with the right spacing for the number of teeth, or a dividing head. Finally, I would point out that your material selections are extremely different. Aluminum is soft, wears easily, and is not very tempature resistant. Titanium is much tougher, more heat resistant, and more difficult to machine.

here is a picture and they use aluminum

Those look like chain sprockets, not gears :)

Yes, you could profile mill those without fancy gear cutting machinery, if you can develop the correct tooth profile.

Those look like chain sprockets, not gears :)

Yes, you could profile mill those without fancy gear cutting machinery, if you can develop the correct tooth profile.


How would I do that?

How would I do that?

UH-OH :D

They do look like sprockets, are these chain driven ?

The first thing you will need is all sprocket dimensions so you know what you want to end up with, A cad program to draw this 2D profile and cam software to create the toolparh and convert to G-Code so that that your CNC mill will know what/where and how much to cut. In the midst of all this you have to know or learn how to do all of this.

Hope you are not in a hurry :)

thanks i'm learning g code now. then eventually after that mastercam

How would I do that?

Take a look at this link:

http://www.gizmology.net/sprockets.htm

Pete

Here is a picture where the yellow represents the toolpath, along with the g-code for you to look at, you will see in this case the G-Code is a very straight forward XYZ moves.

Here is a picture where the yellow represents the toolpath, along with the g-code for you to look at, you will see in this case the G-Code is a very straight forward XYZ moves.

thanks a lot i'm going to go play that at school