Being a learning Sr. person, and self taught student of Solidworks I am wanting to mesh the miter gears in this assembly so that I can see the cam rotate and operate the rods that control the valves. (The Assembly is titled 'Assem Complete Engine').
Secondly I will want to design a Spring that operates the 'Exhaust Valve' at the bottom of this assembly, that will load the actuator against the Cam that is on the same shaft as the Miter Gears.
Would appreciate some guidance here.
No, if I knew where to find that command I'd be way ahead. :-)
Hi Ken,
After you start the mate command (M) go to Mechanical Mates,
choose the axis of each gear for mate.
Choose ratio.
If you want to align teeth after this suppress the Gear Mate, then move teeth into proper alignment then unsuppress the Gearmate
I did find the Gear Mate command (went to the ADVANCED portion of MATES), still stuck with this, as my application is MITER GEARS, did not find the solution though.
You will have to setup other mates as well for bevel gears before then do the gear mate.
Slot Mates have been available since SW14.
Thanks Dave
Paul, Thanks for the reply and tip, however as you can see here, all the choices withing Mate Selections are 'HALF TONE' meaning that they are non-selectable, is this because I have the student version, or am I missing something?
Hi Ken... that is odd... could be your install is bad?
Did you open the file I posted.. or you did open it.. and you're showing that Gear setting I had with the grayed out??
Make sure you are selecting cylindrical faces for the mate, such as the gear ID or OD, not the teeth.
Hi Ken,
Try using axis. Although it will show mm, the ratio still works
i.e. 1:2 will appear as 1mm:2mm
See example I posted. Although it is 2 spur gears it will work same way for bevel gears @ any angle.
The mate just maintains the tooth ratio count between the gears.
1. Use the Gear Mate.
2. Select cylindrical faces for each gear.
3. The Ratio boxes will populate with the diameters of those faces, but those might not give the correct ratio. You can override those values with the number of teeth on each gear, or something that is directly proportional to the number of teeth.
In my gear mates I often first make some kind of alignment mate such as coincident planes from the gears or an angle mate. This assures a properly meshed starting point. I will rename this mate something like "Initial Alignment". Then you can suppress this mate and add the gear mate. If the gears get out of mesh, as can easily happen, then just suppress the gear mate, unsuppress the alignment mate, suppress the alignment mate, and unsuppress the gear mate and you are back in business
Neville, Dennis & Paul,
I have tried all of your recommendations, thank you! However even after opening Paul's ZIP file and determining I'd done (as near as I can tell) just the same, I still cannot get the gears to rotate one another. So I am closed, yet not there yet. Would appreciate a little more help here.
In the same vein, I somehow have created a MATE that prevents the CRANK from rotating, I backtracked and deleted MATES, tried the rotation, then UNDOING the deletion before moving on to the next logical MATE that would prevent the rotation, any suggestions on finding the culprit MATE?
Again, thank you for helping this old man.
Hi Ken,
Your in luck, I have a spare 1/2hr.
Your main cylinder at top of tree needed to be fixed, otherwise a lot of things start moving when trying to drag gears around !! Always try and make your base part at top of tree fixed.
To many mates stopping things from moving so have suppressed them (Highlighted).
Always use minimum amount of mates to position something. To much doubling up or lock mates really gets things confused.
Crankshaft now moves with gears and have done a basic coincident mate with planes for Cam Crank & Shaft Driven Control to get Intake valve moving.
You can edit coincident mate and change it to angular mate to get your desired timing. Have moved gears a bit to get mesh looking more or less right.
A tip - Isolate components when you are mating them together
Neville, I have my 'previous assembly' and this one open simultaneously so I can obtain the same results as you have, however I cannot find the "Axis" of the 16 tooth gear anywhere in it's part file, Please help me there, I'm sure it is simple, however not for me:-(.
I've learned about putting the 1'st part normal to the Assembly Planes, sure enough that made it much better. As well as turning off the planes in all the parts until they are needed. Great tips, that I'll use from here on out, and remember you for.
All cylindrical parts have a temporary axis in them, just turn it on under view, hide/show.
It is very easy and much advised to create a regular axis on parts and use that. Viewing temporary axes is helpful only if there are very few cylindrical surfaces. I think in this case viewing temporary axes would not be very helpful.
Ken Brunskill wrote:
Neville, I have my 'previous assembly' and this one open simultaneously so I can obtain the same results as you have, however I cannot find the "Axis" of the 16 tooth gear anywhere in it's part file, Please help me there, I'm sure it is simple, however not for me:-(.
I've learned about putting the 1'st part normal to the Assembly Planes, sure enough that made it much better. As well as turning off the planes in all the parts until they are needed. Great tips, that I'll use from here on out, and remember you for.
Hi Ken,
As Dennis Dohogne said, it's probably better to create and use proper axis, however I did this 'quick and dirty' just to get it back to you. If you look at last image in my post, you can just see the little temp axis.
If you zoom in on Solidworks you will see it. It should be highlighted. Remember to control select & right click & isolate just the 2 gears, otherwise you will get a whole lot of other temp axis all on top of each other !!.
If you use the View Hide/Show button and isolate tool life is a lot easier
On image above, I have re-selected a longer axis from hub of large gear. Click on pic to bring up larger.
The axis for 16 tooth gear is there, highlighted in orange, if you zoom in.
Again there are a couple of temp axis here from other features that all share the same axis.
If trying to select an axis feature that shares the same space, right click over axis and choose select other and you can cycle thru different entities until one you desire comes up.
This is really very easy. I just now downloaded your assembly. There were several mates I suppressed in order to allow the two gears to turn. I then selected the two hub journals on each gear and then went to Mechanical Mates, Gear Mate.
Here you can see the faces I picked. In the Ratio: the boxes were filled out with the diameters of the journals, but those were not at the 2:1 ratio of your gears so I simply overrode those values with the number of teeth in the gears. With the dialogue box still open you can grab one of the gears and rotate it so you can see how the two work together. In this case they went in opposite directions so all I had to do was check the box for Reverse below the ratio. Now they move together at the proper ratio and no extra steps, such as creating axes, were required.
Ken Brunskill, this is a great project for you to learn a lot. If you have not already I highly recommend you go through the built-in tutorials, especially the ones on mates. It seems you have a lot more mates than are necessary. In my experience, the fewer the mates, the more stable the assembly. Also, it helps to mate the parts as they would be physically touching as if you were putting it together yourself.
Have you tried a gear mate?