All long-term value is built from the follow-through part of short-term habits. Follow-through as in golf swings not as in delivering on commitments. It’s respecting the momentum of every atomic action that produces natural “extra” effects relative to immediate needs.
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Writing up notes after meetings is one of the very few I’ve managed to stick to. Brief cues during, detailed notes after, review before next meeting. Turns a staccato thread of though with lots of rework/redundancy into a smooth stream.
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When it works well, clients don’t actually notice. It just looks like I’m on the ball, keeping up with situation and maintaining state. I send them the notes, which they like, but many don’t appreciate this particular effect. It’s only when thread breaks that it’s noticeable.
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(Which is rare... I’m occassionally late, but almost never skip)
Playing with gears again after a long time, it strikes me that involute gear tooth profiles are all about follow-through and smoothness.
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Unlike primitive gears, involute profiles maintain continuous contact between 2 gear tooth faces and allow next tooth to pick up where previous tooth leaves off. That’s why well-designed gears can be very quiet compared to noisy primitive ones.
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Replying to
Fun fact: Involute gears are not the unique solution to this! You're describing the 'fundamental law of gearing' which says the angular velocity of both gears must be constant throughout the mesh.
What's special about involutes is they obey it over a range of center distances.
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Cycloid gears obey the law as well, but only for an exact center distance which is hard to provide in most applications. They're easier to make though, so they're used a lot in watchmaking
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The wildest solution to the law IMO is Wildhaber-Novikov gearing. The tooth profile is an exterior circular arc on one gear and interior on the other which definitely *doesn't* uphold the law, but then you make both gears helical and suddenly it works!
geartechnology.com/articles/0115/
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You’re clearly the right person to ask: what’s the best way to get going with 3D printing gears? I have a small entry-level printer and just getting comfy with OnShape. In my ME drawing classes ~93, I only drew sample gear profiles on paper and never learned to do them in CAD
I have a few ideas for projects that will require gears. My Everest project would be an equatorial mount gearbox for a telescope.
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Replying to
Hah thank you!
The unfortunate answer is that Autodesk Inventor's gear generator is the best I've used, but you do *not* want to buy that software lol
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Also if you'd like mechanical device design superpowers, read through Fundamentals of Design by Prof Slocum:
meddevdesign.mit.edu/fundamentals-o
It's got alternating summary / in depth pages so it's super light reading, and it's contributed more to my skills than my undergrad by FAR
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When I was making gears I downloaded some pre-made 3D models in standard gear sizes from Thingiverse, and then customized the axle connections which they used.
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