Funny how my old stuff shows up on hacker news from time to time, though it was less than a year ago that I ported it to javascript, used to be flash, cause when I created it more than ten years ago, javascript canvas wasn't mature enough yet.
Big fan of your videos. I hope your tendinitis improves and you can make it back into the shop soon to make more power tools out of old furniture other people have thrown out.
Hi Matthias! As everyone else, I love your work, and really admire your designs. Thanks for sharing!
> Funny how my old stuff shows up on hacker news from time to time
I really like this feature from Hacker News. People sharing periodically the same projects that have inspired or awe them. These kind of projects are not "news", and that makes them better, they've standed the test of time and keep amazing people year after year.
Cheers Matthias - and adding my voice. My kids are a huge fan of yours. And given that youtube has replaced TV in our house your videos are a highlight. They want more and more complex mouse mazes please- multi story if possible.
Matthias, thanks for making your videos. They are what got me into woodworking, which I'm guessing will be a life-long hobby.
I really appreciate your style of videos as well. Thanks for not "chasing the algorithm", and for staying true to your fanbase (as demanding as we can be).
I've learned so much from your general approach to problem-solving, as well. So, thanks for not editing out those parts.
Good on you for sharing it :) I have a friend who loves making machines out of materials on hand (many a stirling engine built from plywood, tin cans, and balloons!), and I've forwarded this link to him.
Hey, awesome tool! I used it for a hackathon project at Case Western a few years back to make the gears for driving a laser cut wood tank tread for a gameday dip carrying robot. Thanks for making this!
I really enjoy your videos. I wish I had the space and time to make stuff out of wood. Software and servers isn't just the same since you can't touch it.
Matthias is one of my personal heros, I've been reading/watching his stuff for years. His videos are mostly what got me into woodworking and made me see it as more than just a way to build furniture. I built a bandsaw, out of wood, based on his plans: http://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a-band...
Fantastic read, thank you. Hopefully you're not put off metric for life -- so much as put off low-quality tools. I'm a bit envious that you have a thicknesser at less than a year 'into woodwork'. Presumably one of the benefits of living in North America. (In AU decent workshop tools are hideously expensive, with limited ranges available domestically.)
I tried to do all the calculations by hand, but eventually realized I needed to make a little custom CAD program like this to help me. I tried more general-purpose CAD programs but couldn't figure out how to set up the constraints I needed.
Anyway I think there's a lot of usefulness in purpose-built online tools like this for generating templates and plans. Such programs are pretty easy to whip up too using the Canvas API and a basic geometric primitives library.
They are both basically "CAD/CAM for programmers" - and allow for parametric models to be designed. In fact, there are more than a few models like that on Thingiverse, so if you needed to resize something to fit your needs, you can (plus tons of gear and other similar custom power-transmission systems).
Of course, that's all for design and modeling - it wouldn't help for other problems, where some form of calculation and checking of a "model" (in the sense of a simulation or idea - not necessarily a complete physical object rendering) is needed.
You see a ton of these kinds of tools in the electronics and hobbyist realms; quick calculators to tell you how much resistance to use for various LED configurations, or 555 timer customizers for common circuits - things like that. I know of one out there which gives you torque/power curves for a variety of different RC hobby electric motors. There are of course several for physics simulation and testing, too...
I once had a problem with OpenSCAD when I needed to sort - within model - objects of different kinds. The example sorting algorithm (a quicksort) is shown in the documentation, but it was working only with a particular kind of objects.
Long story short, OpenSCAD turned out to be powerful enough to have a Lisp written in it. Lisp manipulated strings and allowed factoring out the sorting algorithm and applying it with different comparison algorithms, supplied as parameters. Given Lisp, I think it's possible that a lot of things can be done in an OpenSCAD script.
Wow nice links, thank you! No I didn't run across those. I was attempting it mainly with AutoCAD and its SDK since that's what I knew best. Will definitely be using OpenSCAD now for...something!
I didn't even really consider holes since my goal was to prove an idea I had of using "lincoln log joints" with "impact-tightened constrictor knot lashing". I'm put quotes around those terms since I made them up.
If I did use holes though, assuming I kept the lincoln log joints as well, then I reckon that would weaken the joints too much, e.g. crack the pipe on hard impacts. Also all the weight of all the bolts would add up quick. Hmm I suppose I could use plastic bolts of some kind, but then they'd have to be thicker, thus making the holes bigger, thus weakening structure further. Just thinking out loud. There could be a way, but yea I was proving the lashing concept first and foremost.
You're giving me some ideas for what to do with a bunch of bamboo I have overgrowing my area. "Standard" methods for dealing with wood cylinders aren't very strong or convenient so I'm seeing from your work how traditional asian construction arrived at lashings. Bamboo is so strong and light, it's a shame not to use more around the house.
I was thinking that this would only be good for light duty as at least some of the teeth would be along the grain and liable to break off. Then I went to the homepage and, indeed, there are pictures of gears with the teeth glued in so that they have a different grain from the underlying gear.
A better option would be to use aircraft or marine grade plywood—somethings that’s guaranteed not to have voids. It’ll be a lot stronger than making the teeth individually and attaching them to a round core.
The strength of wood is quite directional; since the plys in plywood are not in the same orientation, it's almost by definition less strong than a solid piece of the same type of properly oriented wood.
A lot of people believe this, but it is incorrect. In plywood, the glue transfers the load across the faces of each ply from strand to neighboring strand through the adjacent plies. This can result in a stronger bond between neighboring strands than if no cross-plies were present. This amounts to more than just splitting resistance.
As a parallel case, consider multi-ply composite construction, where sheets of fabric, sometimes of sheets with a single fiber orientation, are laid at angles to each other to spread the loads in exactly this way. They both better approximate an isotropic material, and are stronger than an equivalent thickness of singly-oriented plies all in the same orientation.
Sorry, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I agree that wood reinforced glue is stronger than wood, but it's not really speaking to improving a wooden gear as above.
Gears are subject to predictable stresses, and so being able to orient a material to best handle those stresses will make a stronger gear. Plywood, like anything else, is a compromise that, as you say, has a more isotropic character. Obviously, there is a wide range of strength in wood, and so plywood. I think it's reasonable to say that one could construct a stronger gear using teeth from readily available solid wood, then readily available plywood. Good luck finding hickory plywood :).
To your first sentence though, if you take the same size and quality solid board and piece of plywood at your local hardware store (making a reasonable attempt at an apples-to-apples comparison), the board will be almost certainly be stiffer and stronger with the grain, than the plywood will: https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_...
Probably nothing - It seems mostly that people who cut gears in metal would not use paper templates.
In wood, I've cut gears with my CNC Router, that works great for wood precision. In metal, I get a gear cutter set and cut them out of blanks with a lathe/mill. Metal gears tend to be smaller and require much more precision. There's no reason why the shape of these gears wouldn't work, though.
I think usually metal gears are not cut by laser cutter or CNC router, but instead slotted using a milling cutter one tooth at a time and then the blank is rotated to the next position to cut the next tooth.
But of course if your metal gears are large enough to cut from the flat side then this template will work fine.
There are many ways to make gears, hobbing is one of the commonly used processes for cutting them from a blank. There is a cutter that looks something like a milling cutter, but it is turned in sync with the gear blank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbing
Funny how my old stuff shows up on hacker news from time to time, though it was less than a year ago that I ported it to javascript, used to be flash, cause when I created it more than ten years ago, javascript canvas wasn't mature enough yet.