Design and Fabrication of a Novel FDM-Printed Spur Gear and a Modular Gear Wear Test Rig
10th International Conference on Scientific and Academic Research ICSAR 2026, Konya, Türkiye, 17 - 18 Ekim 2026, ss.456-463, (Tam Metin Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: Konya
- Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.456-463
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Developing polymer gear mechanisms for steering simulation systems requires a manufacturable gear geometry and a test infrastructure for operating gear pairs under controlled conditions. This study presents the design and fabrication of a novel spur gear for fused deposition modelling (FDM) and of a modular wear test rig, together with an explicit dynamics simulation of the gear pair. The involute profile (z = 22, m = 4 mm, α = 20°) was generated in GearTrax, and the gear and rig were designed in SolidWorks with a recessed web, a keyed shaft connection, tolerance compensation and interchangeable mounting. The gears were printed from polylactic acid (PLA) and carbon fibre-reinforced polyamide (ePA-CF) on a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon printer. The rig comprises bearing blocks with 6005 bearings, keyed shafts, a 24 V DC motor and an Arduino-based speed control unit. Gear pairs were run in five consecutive 10 min stages from 100 to 500 rpm, and the tooth surfaces were recorded with an optical microscope. In ANSYS Explicit Dynamics, the driving gear was rotated by 108° in 0.06 s (≈305 rpm) with frictional contact. At the end of the simulation, the ePA-CF pair showed 38.5% lower maximum equivalent elastic strain and 7.7% lower maximum equivalent stress (2.97 vs. 3.22 MPa) than the PLA pair, with maxima at the bore of the driving gear, while a start-up stress peak of 24.0 MPa occurred in the PLA model. The study documents a reproducible workflow from gear design to fabrication, testing and simulation.