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Dear fellow 3d lovers,

I have a question concerning one of my designs. I would like to print a worm gear. It will not have to endure a lot of force, but I would like it to be able to act as it should. Would this be possible with a 3d printer? The gears have a tooth thickness of about 1.4 mm (please see the attachments for the full design).

Thanks in advance,

Kaj
worm stl - WormGearSet01_worm-1.STL (912 KB)
worm stl - WormGearSet01_wheel-1.STL (6.21 MB)

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@Linda_Zouad @Daan_3D is this something you can help with? Thanks

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hi Kaj,

those are fairly small models, however these are still printable. You should look towards splitting the worm gears in half, so that you have two parts with flat surfaces that are easier to print, if you want to get this done at a hub that uses a FDM printer the nozzle diameter should be 0,3mm or smaller. I’m currently working on an adapter that enables 0,25mm nozzles on my printer (currently i can only use 0,35mm or larger).

Same for the second part that you’ve uploaded, try to split it in half along the rotating axis to safe alot of cost for support structure. If you can you should try to model a cuboid cavitity in both halfes and get yourself a fitting cuboid printed also to glue those parts with a point of reference.

Good luck with this project,

Marius

PS: if the models get printed solid (ask for that!) they should be durable enough, however you should look towards materials such as Nylon or PET (T-Glase or Colorfabb XT) since PLA and to a sertain extend ABS have too much surface friction and especially PLA will wear out after fairly less usage of the wormgear. Gears out of PLA will sand themself down, because the material is so brittle, ABS is better, but for long lasting prints Nylon would be the best.

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here is a pcbs vise i printed a while back that uses a gear like the one that you are looking to get done. it works flawlessly and was printed vertically as one piece…

A quick glance at the model would make me wonder if there was any way to make the threads a bit shallower as that may aid in the print not needing support if printed vertically.

The wheel however will require quite a bit of support in order to print as designed with FDM. you may want to find a good SLS printer for thesauri at the very least someone that can print in resin with a DLP printer.
working prototype.jpg

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Hi Marius, thanks a lot! This was really helpful!

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Hi thanks! That gear does look quite alike :slight_smile: . You mentioned some difficulties concerning the wheel. Is it advisable to cut this object in half so that it will have a flat surface and then stick it together?

Best regards,

Kaj

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i think cutting the wheel in half is a great idea! that should enable you to print without support and in the end, that is what you always want as supports suck…