FCGear Workbench

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Revision as of 20:32, 2 September 2020 by Blue0cean (talk | contribs)
FCGear External Workbench icon

Introduction

The FCGear Workbench is an external workbench for manufacturing different types of gears and worm gears in FreeCAD. The parametric modelling allows the required geometries to be changed at any time. For example, by changing a few parameters, the involute gear becomes either a spur gear, helical gear or double helical gear.

In order for the results from FC Gear to be usable, a certain amount of basic knowledge about the different types of gearing is required. Module, pitch diameter or root diameter are common terms and should therefore be known.

In conjunction with 3D printing, home users now have the opportunity to design and produce gears and worm gears according to their own personal ideas and, if necessary, to adapt them to the constructional conditions.

Before FCGear Workbench can be started, it must be installed (how it is done see below at Installation). After installation, the tools are available in the toolbar.

The FCGear Drop down menu

Types of gears

Involute Gear

From left to right: Spur gearing, helical gearing, double helical gearing (see FCGear InvoluteGear)

Involute Rack

From left to right: Spur gearing, helical gearing, double helical gearing (See FCGear InvoluteRack)

Cycloide Gear

From left to right: Spur gearing, helical gearing, double helical gearing (see FCGear CycloideGear)

Bevel Gear

From left to right: Spur gearing, spiral teeth (see FCGear BevelGear)

Worm Gear

Above: Worm gear (see FCGear WormGear)

Crown Gear

Above: Crown gear (see FCGear CrownGear)

Timing Gear and Lantern Gear

From left to right: Timing gearing, lantern gearing (see FCGear TimingGear or FCGear LanternGear)

References

Tools

Toolbar

Installation

Automatic installation

The recommended method of installation as of v0.17 is via the Addon Manager. It can be found in the Tools → Addon Manager

Manual installation

If there is a necessity to manually install this workbench the following instructions are provided to do so:

Linux

sudo ln -s (path_to_FCGear) (path_to_freecad)/Mod

Windows

Tested on (7/8/8.1/10) (From GitHub)

  • download ZIP-archive by clicking on button in top right corner
  • go to FreeCAD-Macro-Folder (inside FreeCAD, choose "Edit > Preferences > General > Macro to see Macro Path)
  • if you haven't changed the standard settings, it should be "C:\Users\Your_Windows_User_Name\AppData\Roaming\FreeCAD"
  • \appdata is a HIDDEN folder, so you may have to change the settings of the file explorer to see it
  • create a sub-folder called "FCGear"
  • make sure to copy files and folders EXACTLY as shown above to the just created sub-folder
  • restart FreeCAD and the workbench should appear in the pull-down menu
  • within FreeCAD you can choose "Tools > Customize > Workbenches" to enable/disable workbenches

MacOSX

See instructions for Linux above

Links to Gear WB

Other useful links