In this video, learn to use Autodesk Fusion 360’s joint simulation tools to create working gears inside of your 3D models!
Do you like these Fusion 360 Tutorials? Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay up to date on the newest videos! Subscribe Here – The Fusion Essentials YouTube Channel
Full Fusion 360 Joint Tutorial Playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGgmA1WZESs&list=PLHEouj-sdEJEdDfqwsiKI2izfYUGHi_Mu
In this series, we’ve talked about the different kinds of moving joints you can use in Fusion 360 in order to simulate movement. In this video, I want to talk about creating operating gears inside of Fusion 360 that have movement tied together, so that when one gear moves, another gear moves accurately at the same time. In order to do this, we’re going to start by creating our gears.
I don’t want to get super in-depth about the mechanics of gears in this particular video, so what we’re going to do instead is use a script to create our gears. Scripts are basically little mini-programs inside of Fusion 360 that automate an action. You can access them in the “tools” toolbar, under the add-ins function, under the scripts and add-ins button. In this particular case, we’re going to scroll down and look for the function labeled “spur gear.”
This script is designed to help you create gears inside of Fusion 360. Click on the script (doesn’t really matter which of the two), then click the button for “run.” To start off, let’s create one gear with 24 teeth. Change the hole size to 1 inch and click the button for “ok.” This will create one gear with 24 teeth. Now, let’s create another gear that has 48 teeth. Notice that the gear with 48 teeth is twice as large as the gear with 24 teeth.
Move the gear so that the teeth align. What we want to do is rotate our gear so our teeth align. This is actually pretty easy. When you think about it, this gear has 48 teeth, meaning it also has 48 gaps. Rotate the gear by 360 divided by 48. You may do a bit of fine adjusting here. Create a body to make up the center of the gear, then create a component from the body. Do the same for the second gear. Now, create as-built joints between the gears and the central posts. This allows us to dictate the base spin location of the gears. This is going to be a revolute joint.
Make sure to ground the central piece so it can’t move.
Finally, we want to use the motion link to tie the movement of the two gears together. Remember that with the gear ratio, the 48 tooth gear should move twice as fast as the smaller gear, so set the motion of the big gear to 360, and the smaller gear to 180. This will make the smaller gear half as fast.
