{"id":7334,"date":"2025-11-04T11:19:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7334"},"modified":"2025-11-04T11:19:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T10:19:04","slug":"cutting-an-actual-involute-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7334","title":{"rendered":"Cutting An Actual Involute Gear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Buoyed by my small successes with the worm and wheel yesterday I decided to take the plunge and set up the mill to actually cut an involute gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I took Brian&#8217;s advice and did a test cut on a stub of aluminium to take the burrs off and bed in the cutter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It has to be said I made some mistakes but it was a great learning opportunity and as a number of fellow members asked on the GOG online modellers meeting I recorded a video of the process. I recorded the whole thing which is about 12 minutes long and I suspect may be a little boring in the middle where I was just repeating the cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s a list of the things I did wrong\/didn&#8217;t do that I should have etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1. I didn&#8217;t fully tighten the locking collar when I refitted the 3D printed division plate which mean that after a few cuts it stopped moving and I lost my index position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2. Although I checked some of the index pin holes in the division plate, I didn&#8217;t check them all and that came back to bite me as I struggled to get the pin in some of the holes properly this didn&#8217;t really affect the indexing too much but it did make it really hard to get the pin out between cuts<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3. I forgot to lock the Y axis of the mill table which meant that the cutter eventually pushed away from the workpiece a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taking all that into account I did manage to cut a gear (ish)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"667\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-667x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7335\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-667x1024.jpg 667w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-195x300.jpg 195w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-768x1179.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-1001x1536.jpg 1001w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-1335x2048.jpg 1335w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test.jpg 1517w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 667px) 100vw, 667px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other &#8216;side&#8217; isn&#8217;t quite so pretty&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"652\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors-652x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7336\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors-652x1024.jpg 652w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors-191x300.jpg 191w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors-768x1206.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors-978x1536.jpg 978w, http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/First-Gear-Cut-test-Errors.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 652px) 100vw, 652px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u200bHere is the video for those who are interested in the how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"First test of gear cutting at home\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PGf_TL6c3Zc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Buoyed by my small successes with the worm and wheel yesterday I decided to take the plunge and set up the mill to actually cut an involute gear. I took Brian&#8217;s advice and did a test cut on a stub &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7334\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gear-cutting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7337,"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7334\/revisions\/7337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.railway-models-and-art.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}