is this possible?

imagine a gear set with one gear fully formed and the other just a disk. Now
rotate the gears about the centers (in opposite directions) and have the
profile of the first gear machined (or formed) into the disk so that it is
an exact match with the first. The shapes don't have to be gears but that
is the best example I could come up with. You should be able to do this
with a triangle, square or any shape so that when rotated it forms a meshing
shape on the plain disk.

Does this even make sense?

Thanks

 

If you need to generate gears, have a look at http://www.camnetics.com
If your problem is more general, then I'll try to help. I don't know the
"buzzword" for this, I call it "inverse CAM" because you want to obtain a
cad model out of a (simple) "manufacturing" process. It is definitely not a
simple problem, so I'm working on it ;-)
In the general case you'd have to do a loft cut of the "tool" profile along
a path. Our "MathSurf" add-in can help if you have mathematical equations of
the profile(s) and path, which is the hard part.
Have a look at http://www.dynabits.com/plus/mathsurf/gallery/drill.htm for
an example.
In your specific case, and as long as the axis of both your cylinders are
parallel, you only have to generate one curve. I didn't go into this in
detail, but "involute curve" is the term that comes to my mind. Send me more
details (or even models) of what you want to do and I'll try to help you
more.

 

not sure if wrap would do it, but the knurl is another good example.

 

To me it sounds like you want to rotate both gears and make one gear cut
the other.

If you only rotated one gear, you might be able to do this with a loft,
using the faces of the gear as one profile, and copying the faces to a
finishing position with arc guide curves (even simpler if you could do a
revolved cut).

If you need to rotate both gears while making the cut, it becomes more
complex. The lofted cut path becomes the added motion of one gear around
one axis plus the motion of the other gear about the other axis. I don't
believe you can accomplish this with a simple technique in SW (like
projected curve). I think to get the path, you would need to write an
equation that maps the motion of one part which is rotating when viewed
from another part that is rotating on a perpendicular axis. Once you get
that, the SW website has a macro that will plot points on a 3D curve to
make a spline. You can use the spline as a guide curve for a lofted cut.

....or you could just break down and buy the Camnetics software that has the
gear profiles all figured out.

matt.

 

yes, I would need to rotate both gears to make the cut... if they were
gears. I just used gears as an example people could picture in their mind.
The actual parts are not gears at all.