Diff contact pattern help (1 Viewer)

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

In theory, the root and heel are strongest, the crown and toe the weakest.

With used gears, you're not going to get better than midway up the tooth, with a good pattern. The farther you get up the tooth the weaker the tooth is. IMHO, it's better to have a low(er) pattern on the drive side, using used gears, than a high pattern.

I'd try my best to get the contact pattern midway between the inner (heel) point and the midpoint and call it good.

Some of your print looks like it's 80% of the tooth face. It's hard to analyze what's going on. If you can, clean off all the ink and print up just 5-6 teeth, in three spots, evenly spaced around the circumference on the ring. Then take a look at it. I think you may find you're OK.

As I said earlier, the important point to keep in mind is backlash. That you can measure directly; the print stuff is just a visual indication that your measurement is correct. You don't want the gears cramped together so tightly that they eat each other. Both are hardened, so they wil eat into each other, even when they are set properly. Usually, contacting components are designed so that one is sacrificial (soft) and one isn't (hard). The sacrificial component is (usually) designed to be easy to replace and cheap; gears are the exception to this rule. That's why setup is critical for gears. If it's wrong, they eat each at a far quicker rate than they should, resulting in reduced life expectancy.
 
Last edited:

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom