30 Minute Mechanisms

I am going through hundreds of mechanisms in blender.
Begun 3D printing them, it’s been great fun.


If you want to see any mechanism’s let me know

Going to cover worm and planetary gears quickly next, then go on to cams I was thinking.

Looks good.

What 3d printer are you using? How long did it take to print? What sort of filament is that?

mm…very good tell us about the project some more

Thanks for the reply, perhaps I was rude not to give more information.

3D Printer: FlashForge Creator Pro
Filament used : PLA (for now)
Nozzle : 0.4 mm
Layer height : 0.2mm
Infill : 20%
Support : None!

All gears and mechanisms are designed at 4mm thick, though you can change this as you see fit.
Everything has been designed to work with screws of the M3 variety so a single set should be manageable.

Print times :

Gears : All gears up to 30 teeth can be printed in under 30 minutes. i.e 10 teeth = 5 minutes, 30 teeth = 30 minutes. I will be trying my absolute hardest to limit print times to under 30 Minutes for each new mechanism (Rack and pin will be too hard for example)

Handle : The handle takes 42 minutes to print, though this also has the “main axle” unit in the .stl file and contains three functioning components in itself (rotating grip with clip, bevelled axle for driving gear mount and a second clip which also acts as a semi permanent guide)

Frame/housing unit : 1 hour 30 per side. This will be used for hundreds of mechanisms. It has been designed to be quiet universal with extensions when necessary. i.e. Cams, worm gears, rack and pin, pulley systems, linkage mechanisms and much more.

This is all available to download for free as we progress with regular updates;

Currently I am cleaning some of the gears for a paint purely for cosmetic purposes, I will post a painted version hopefully int he next few days.

This is being created as a fun learning project for my channel so that people can learn about tolerances in their 3D printers, practice bed levelling, cleaning tips and much more in a fun way.

I think next will have to be planetary gears, though by having the gears having almost universal arms. All I will have to do now is to design and print an arm to mount the planetary gears onto. Since I already have the hole sizes ready to cut as a Boolean operation, all I really have to do is make a circle with 3 arms.

Some updates:

Geneva Gears
Cams
Linkages
Rockers
Cranks

Free Download :

thank you very much

Thanks for the extra info, I can’t watch videos so its frustrating sometimes. I want to get into some 3d printing but I am limited at the moment. Posting printing times was much appreciated I am having a hard time deciding on a printer, Thanks Mate.

I have travelled to China and visited the Guangzhou International 3D printing expo. + I am a recognised distributor to Australia by FlashForge.
I give free advice, let me know what printers you are thinking of and I will let you know my opinion with 0 personal interest so I will try not to be bias

I’m new to working in blender, but it seems like such a visual (i.e. imprecise non-mechanical) tool. These mechanisms have me re-thinking that.

Neat I’ve designed a gear or two myself (but a bit more basic), yet they go untested because I have the same kind of problem as Marshall Jones above. (In my case, a lack of $$$.) Still it’s neat to see something developed in Blender instead of CAD actually working.