Nice online Orrery

Had to share this nice digital Orrery...
http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/orrery_2006.swf

Cutting wood!

So as you can see I've started cutting the gears. 

Whew! When I said this project would be a 'zen' project, I was not kidding! Each large gear wheel takes approximately one and a half hours each, obviously less for the smaller gear wheels.

I've been having small issues knowing what printing settings to use when printing off the paper templates. What I do is print the gears on paper at a scale of 1 to 1, then spray adhesive on the back and stick to the thin ply that I've decided to use. If I don't pay attention to the printer settings, errors will occur. And considering the tiny tolerances of the teeth, all the gears MUST be printed with the same printing settings. One bit of good news is that Alibre (my CAD program) and Inkscape (I used this to generate the gear designs) both print accurately. So when I print the gears with the CAD changes and compare them to the Inkscape print jobs, they match. That is GOOD NEWS.

Then off to the scroll saw. I should be using a band saw, but I'm thinking it that might be too aggressive, and not as delicate for the smallish teeth. I was going to use thicker Russian Birch ply, which is very nice but expensive stuff, but realized that was over kill, at least for the gears. If I use a fine scroll saw blade, and take my time, the gears come out fine. I'm using three separate layers of ply for each large gear. I wanted to add a design detail and cut down on the weight a bit. You can see the layered effect I am after in the photo above.

Other news concerns the bearings for the arbors. I've sourced out a company in the U.S. called Igus that make all plastic bearings. ( http://www.igus.de/default.asp?PAGE=IGLIDE) After chatting with a sales rep, I've got free samples of the various sizes I'd like to use in the mail. I asked for pairs of each so that I might make a jig and test how well they cut down on the friction. I should get those soon I hope! If they work well I may buy fifty or so at a time for future projects. (A clock?)

And finally cryptic a view of my completed gearbox.

It's not there 100 % yet, but the dimensions are fixed. The only modification I need to make is with the placing of the plastic bearings mentioned above. More on that when I receive my free samples. Tee hee hee!

Time to put on the dust mask again and get busy!