Herringbone Gear

The Herringbone Gear node.

The Herringbone Gear group generates a set of helical gears stacked with opposing helix angles.

Inputs

Module

The module for this gear.

Teeth

The number of teeth on the gear.

Pressure Angle

The pressure angle in degrees.

Depth

The thickness of the gear.

Hole Radius

The size of the center hole. This may be zero. The upper bound is constrained so the hole can’t be larger than the dedendum.

Half pitch rotation

All gears are created with a right side cog that straddles the X-axis. Checking this will rotate the gear a half a tooth thickness so that the root straddles the X-axis. This is convenient for meshing gears.

Flank Resolution

This integer value sets the resolution of the sides of a gear tooth. The default is a reasonable value, setting it lower will reduce vertex count at the expense of smoothness. Any large value may be reduced by distance merging in the implementation.

Gap

The distance between the two helical components that form the herringbone.

Angle

The angle, in degrees, specifed from \(90^\circ\) on the Z-axis.

Left twist

Negates the Helix Angle for meshing gears. For the herringbone this sets the angle of the lower gear and an opposite twist is given to the upper gear.

Z Faces

The integer number of horizontal slices that form the resolution of the helix. The default is a reasonable value for \(20^\circ\) but you may need more for larger values..

Outputs

Geometry

The generated gear geometry.

Ref. Pitch Radius

The reference pitch radius of the generated gear. This is useful for setting the distance between two meshed gears.

Teeth

For convenience, the number of teeth on this gear.

Examples

12 to 16 herringbone gear set.

Here is a simple example of a 12-to-16 herringbone gear set.

Geometry node network for a meshed herringbone gear set.

As in spur gears, each member of a gear set has the same module and pressure angle. In addition, for any gear with a helix angle it is necessary that one member have an apposing twist. For this gear set is was also necessary to tick the half pitch notatation on one of the gears.