Monday, October 05, 2015

Gear profile generator

Having been inspired by the gear generator found at woodgears.ca I decided to have a go at doing this myself.

Some time ago, I had tried to do this in Java as a learning exercise. I only got so far and gave up before I managed to generate any involute curves required for the tooth profile. Trying to learn Java and the math required at the same time was probably too much and it got put aside.

Recently I had a look at the Go programming language. Then Matthias Wandel produced the page mentioned above, and I decided to have another crack at drawing gears.

The results so far can be seen on Github, and an example is shown here.

Gear Profile Example Image

What I have learnt

  • Math makes my head hurt.
  • The Go programming language fits the way my brain works better than most other languages. I much prefer it to Java, and will try and see if I can tackle other problems with it, just for fun.