Distributor Gear

[ojh]

Anybody have a notion on how to do a distributor gear, the gear on the bottom of a automobile engines' ignition distributor. It is a bit of a spiral (on a chevvie motor at least) and has 11 teeth.

[JD Mather]

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Design Accelerators

[ReMark]

JDM: This new forum member had a question earlier today regarding parasolids and Inventor. I mentioned you might be able to give him the straight scoop. My knowledge of Inventor is roughly nil.

The post was placed under the AutoCAD > Beginners forum. I think the heading was File Import/Export.

Thank you.

[shift1313]

ojh, as jd mentioned design accelerator. There will be some dynamic inputs for your gear, things you will need to know about it. Do you have a gear in front of you?

If you go into the design accelerator look for a helical gear.

[ojh]

design accelerator? sounds like another brand new thing for me to play and learn with, i do the design stuff at home on another computor. Thanks much guys, will check back tomorrow with yea or nay. oj

[shift1313]

design accelerator or content center is just a library of parts built in. You can create many things like bolts, nuts, roll pins(which you will need for that gear ;)). I have inventor 09 on my home computer but i only have 11 on the one im sitting at now so i cant tell you exactly how to get to it. If it doesnt show up go to the tools menu, add-ins and make sure you have it there.

[JD Mather]

You must be in an iam file to use the DAcc.

[ojh]

Sorry about being late getting back, we are getting ice storm with another on the way.
I did the preocedure as suggested and have got good results and the whole thing has opened a door or two for me thanks. Only problem is that there are multiple teeth and looks as if i'll have to create individual planes to create from. But whole process is slick and i think there is more to it than i have dealt with.
Thanks again, i'll keep tuned oj

[shift1313]

im not sure what you mean by multiple teeth.

you are looking for something like this right?

[ojh]

Way wrong Shift! The helix goes the other way! Just being a smartass, you are too good. That is about perfect. Did you do that with one plane, 1 plane per two teeth or one tooth per plane and multiple planes.

[shift1313]

(hangs his head in shame), i actually didnt do that in inventor. I used solidworks.

Are you drawing the gear or are you loading it from the content center?

For some reason my Inventor wont open at the moment but if I were to draw it, i would draw the gear shape in one plane, copy that to another, and loft between them. Im not sure if there is a twist option but you can use a 3d sketch and draw a spline from one edge on your bottom plane to the other edge you want the "tooth" to go to on your top plane and use this as a guide. can you post a picture of what happened to yours?

[ojh]

I did a test piece this AM, i had to create a seperate plane per tooth and it got a bit tedious, on the up side i got really good at creating planes.
Seems that inventor will make 1 channel at a time, i tried creating a plane on the front of the gear and made an array but i couldn't extrude them for some reason, just one at a time. I'm still learning and having fun. Thanks, oj

[JD Mather]

Way wrong Shift! The helix goes the other way!

Here is one done in Inventor using the DAcc - about 60 seconds of work - another 5 seconds to change the helix direction.

[ojh]

Wow. Design accerators eh? I looked as you once suggested and couldn't locate. They sound much like a library available in mechanical desktop but i have yet to locate in inventor. I will go looking again and will report back in a few days. Thanks, oj

[JD Mather]

I will go looking again and will report back in a few days. Thanks, oj

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Also it sounds like you haven't gone through Help>Learning Tools>Tutorials as there is a Tutorial on Gears as well as several other Design Accelerator components.