+Owiko7 And did not read that Warning sticker on the window, which says, "No trespassing. Violators will get slapped in the face by a wooden-gear-testing device. Survivors will get spanked by said device."
Always good to test these things. You only have to look at the old windmills and watermills, at least in Europe, to see how wooden gears used to power the economy.
John Harrison, the man who invented the marine chronometer, built a turret clock (for Brocklesby Park, North Lincolnshire) in the 1720s with wooden gears (oak and Lignum vitae) and the clock is still working today. I read about him in the book Longitude. It took a lifetime for him to receive the reward for his invention of the chronometer due to him being a lowly carpenter and they refused to believe he could invent something that everyone else couldn't.
+Gian Carlo Martinelli ; Yes that would be great! And if a wooden chain shows to be too difficult to make (or use), a cardan shaft drive, would be awesome imho. Oh, and for spokes, long & tough fiber vines, made of withy (or so) would be lovely too :) Got time for another project, Matthias? ;)
Hey Matthias, Make a 4 square test rig. This will increase the torque in the drive train and forces on the gears. Then your motor only has to overcome friction loses. Great video! Thanks, Jim
I downloaded your gear template program and I used those gears is a mechanical iris inside a nautical door. It's been over a year, the iris has been opened at least 1,000 times and they are still working perfectly! The gears fit together with such precision that I think they will last a lifetime.
You should have contacted some Dutch windmill conservators they would have told you that they have wooden gears in mills from late medieval times and are still running.
Wooden gears can last a very long time. In fact many early European clockmakers preferred to make their mechanism out of wood because wooden gears do not grind away at one another like metal gear trains do. Also as wood is porous, it can absorb oils and can be self lubricating. Some of these clocks are hundreds of years old and can still keep very accurate time. For example, in 1727,John Harrison who is the inventor of the first marine chronometer built his clock "Precision Pendulum no. 2" At the time it was the most accurate clock in the world keeping time to give or take a second a month. It currently resides in the collection of the Leeds City Museum and its movement is made mainly of wood. Thanks for all of your great videos, Keep up the good work!
I used baltic birch gears for the reduction on my power hacksaw and even after several hours they also didn't show any wear. I suspect that at low speed these gears will virtually last for ever.
Depending on the power consumption you would be willing to use, perhaps a gear driven long time running apparatus for that old barn or wooden gear driven heater for the upcoming winter of some sort. Small scale saw mill comes to mind. I suspect the electric motor will die before the wooden gears fail.
Hi Matthias, I like your experimental aproach. In the Netherlands all the old windmills use wooden gears. Alltough they are build as wooden disks with the tooth wedged in to them axialy because the main shafts are all at an angle. I think you might be interested to research this a bit, especially because for every component of the mill a species of wood is selected for its mechanical properties. Two things that I learned from a miller you might want to incoorporate in the power transmission aparatus that you plan to build: 1; use beeswax to grease the gears. This gives a thin but slick coating on the surface. 2; make sure that when you devide the amount of teeth of gear A trough the amount of teeth on gear B you don't get a whole number. This ensures that the same teeth meet occasionally and the ware on your teeth is even. For power distribution this is ideal because you can reduce the play in the gears and thus the noise.
Why not make one of those 100% wooden clock mechanisms? They look really nice too, and I'm sure you could find a way to make it accurate and easy to make :)
i would like to see a re-test with the gears under a more constant resistance/load. I think the wooden board's own momentum after spinning up sort of keeps the gears under less stress than say, if the motor were to spin against a dynamic braking system? Like the way trains use the resistance of the unpowered electric motors to slow down... Surely you know what im referring to? You are Matthias Wandel after all... :)
What about testing different loads? Or other testing like torque vs speed? Also I am not surprised it lasted as long as it did. I thought this was going to be at least a multiple month test. Why not put it somewhere out of the way and leave it on until they break, or a few years? Edit: oh I thought you just uploaded this, nope 5 years ago. UA-cam just decided to recommend it now.
At one time long ago Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, DeSoto, Willy's, among other automobile manufacturers used pressed wood gears for timing gears in their engines. Oiled composite woods had to be strong to handle it.
It must be strong, because, before they use them for making windmills There was only wood around. Metal was to expansive I can't understand why people are surprised
Another superb video. I had the feeling that those gears would last until the cows come home. There isn't that much wear in this application. Not to belittle your efforts which I find to be exemplary. I do think that the massive wooden "fan" blade was overkill but then again, I like overkill. Such as when you jump on your finished projects to demonstrate their strength.
+Joshua Walters I've made one - was worried about it wearing out - no need to worry!! Try googling "wooden clock" and "plans". Lots of plans on the internet, but start with something simple. And start making the escapement as that is the most difficult parts to get right. (And when the escapement is working, the clock is alive and just need some more gears). A clock is a quite simple machine.
+Joshua Walters, + Matthias Wandel. I agree... Matthias, You were looking for a project using gears in power transmission, this would be a good project. You can add lots of gears to do different things than just hours and minutes. Try seconds and Lunar phases to increase the use of wood gears.
+Roger DC UHMW PE is a good material for some applications, but it will deform under the loads gears impose on each other. It's just not stiff enough. Maybe with large/wide enough teeth it could do the job.On the other hand, it's perfectly workable with wood working gears.
I have an idea for a long-term test setup. Make a several 1:10 reductions in series, and hook the slowest gear up to your mechanical counter. With enough reduction, the counter would have a rather long duration. Besides, it would be interesting to see the difference in wear across the reduction chain.
Try make a completely wooden clock, with wooden escapement and all that. ClickSpring is doing one out of brass, so I think it'd be fitting if you did one out of 'premium' wood :D
Ceiling fan motor was good choice for this since they are low speed high torque and can run at high slip with out burning up Wooden geared clocks are another thing that shows that wood gears can be made to last since most of those date back 200 or more years... speaking of wood geared clocks ever going to make one?
The harder material will always consumer the softer. For best longevity I would go with the same wood for all mesh parts. That will last longest. Even if you had to option of two pine gears, or an oak and a pine gear. I'm pretty sure the two pine gears would last longer as they would resist destroying each other.
I was thinking the same thing. If you have a harder and a softer material the softer one will get all the wear. This might be useful in a drive train when it is extremely difficult to replace one gear.
+YeCannyDaeThat nope, there's still the same energy applied that needs to be transferred, and same amount of joules will destroy the same amount of material divided by their UTS in a taken finite element. But there is a value before which material is able to completely recover, so if your elements stay in it - your item will idealy be inderstructible. I.e. when you need to triple your speed by means of gears, if you make two gears - a large one and a small one - surfaces of both gear's teeth will be loaded to the point of destruction (even if it's very small and will take weeks or months to become visible). But if you make three or four smaller gears from same amount of material (i.e. instead 60 to 20 teeth you make 30 to 20 to 10 optionally to another 10 for reverse direction) the same force will spread proportionally between bigger summary surface and will wear out slower or not at all.
I built a wooden clock with gears almost 8 years ago. I'd expect it to continue working for decades if not hundreds of years. I can't see any evidence of wear in my clock gears. They are made from baltic birch plywood. I got the design from Clayton Boyer, the clock is called Simplicity.
That was great. I'm thinking of making wooden pulleys as idler pulleys.. It's gonna be on a 17 horse power briggs motor, turning a 42 inch propeller.. hard and fast.. the pulleys are only gonna be idlers pulleys.. I think it might work..
Volvo B series auto engines have a fiber timing gear. They wear, but it takes decades. They also operate at thousands of RPM, with the whole valve train as a load.
have you done a torque test? i think the weak point would be near the axle. i'm slowly getting around to making my first gearbox, and i've used your online gear generator to print and glue them. Cheers!
Of course the wooden gears and wooden bearings in (Dutch) windmills last many many decades, even when used daily, but they use special kinds of wood like Mispel (mespius germanica, "Groenhart" (bowwood), Demarara, "Pokhout" (Gualacum officinale), Azijnhout (Qeurcus ilex), most likely not Baltic plywood.
Well, it all comes down too how well the gears are made, how well they are set up, and how well they are maintained. If the gears are made accurately there will be no excessive contact on the teeth slowing down wear. If the gears are spaced properly, not to tight to enable binding and not so far apart to enable slipping and grinding is another factor. Also whether having the shafts in bearings or not and whether they were lubricated is another factor. And lastly, keep them clean and and in the case of a continuously running machine keep them lubricated.
I would like to see a another test. Use a stronger motor, to put far more torque on the gears. Also use the same type of wood, for the gears. Perhaps 2 tests one with MDF gears and one with plywood, to compare which one is best for gears.
Just an obscure comment- typically you don't see 1:1 (or 1:2, 1:3, etc.) gears in anything designed for long life- you want gear numbers without common factors. This way you don't have the same teeth contacting repeatedly- so any flaw (either in the gear at the start or one that occurs as damage or wear) doesn't hammer the same spot on the other gear, but rather is spread out over all of them. Say a bit of casting grit goes through the gears- it might embed in one tooth and then over time destroy the teeth it contacts. It's better to spread the wear over the whole gear set- it'll keep running- rather than beating one tooth to failure. And even wear sounds "even", rather than a spot going "rump rump rump". :) On cars- you notice you don't ever see a 3:1 or 4:1 rear end ratio? Always odd numbers like 3.73, 4:10, 4.11, etc.? So, a 4.10 typically has a 10 tooth pinion and 41 tooth ring- 41 is prime, no common factor with 10. A 4.11 would be 9 & 37... again no common factors. 3:73 comes in at 11 & 41, nothing but primes! Clever automotive geeks! (though I'm sure they copied steam engineers... who copied someone else)
once and for all you've proven birch ply is harder than MDF. I think it would've been slightly fairer to run the gears in a matching set and see which one lasts longer- because an MDF gear won't chew into another MDF gear as aggressively as ply wood would. Albeit for the hand-turned jig gears, unless you're name is Schwarzenegger and you get extremely frustrated with it, they shouldn't wear out. (even if they were softer MDF- they're not really "load bearing", or atleast not bearing much of a load). If it was for a driveline of some kind- I'd probably go with a hybrid- the gears which are particularly hard to replace/cut/repair etc. make out of the hardest wood you can justify, and for the mating gears use a high-density MDF. That way, you pick the gear that will wear out to be the easier ones to replace/repair. (in the same way that they use brass for synchro gears, and hardened steel for the drive gears in a manual)
You can use a larger module or pitch diameter and wider gears to increase wear resistance and power transfer capacity. With the right kind of wood, you'll laugh at the plastic POM or acetal gears in cheaper tools. For noise, you could go helical or even herringbone* gears. But how to make those with your tools, that's way beyond me (herringbones are just 2 helicals opposing each other, the Citroën chevron is based on those).
I'd say the biggest problem with using MDF for any moving part that interacts with another, would be seasonal changes. Since depending on the grade of the material the MDF can expand, which if the whole machine was just MDF gears could cause problems since you would have to always have that machine in a temperature controlled areas as to keep it from expanding during seasonal change. Of course I could be over thinking this.
I had made crossbow with wood...I tested it for what draw weight of bow it can hold and it goes over 10 kg....then the string breaks but no damage to mechanism....but I could pull only 4 kg bow so I use underpowered bow...
question, when it comes to gears specifically, wouldn't it be better to impregnate the wood with epoxy or resin with the help of a vacuum chamber ? or even plastic, just melt a couple of bottles in the oven at 210°C and then make gears out of it the same way ? Wood lives, plastic doesn't.
You are really only looking for gross visual wear, wouldn't measuring the original backlash versus the final backlash be a more scientific case? Next what torque load will this gear survive? lol. Using a rig like this to run in the gears (ie lap a pair together) could actually allow for a better running "machine, just needs some adjustment on the shaft spacing to allow the shafts to be varied to reduce the lash as the gears "lap" to each other. Once you have a nicely worn-in gear, next step, cast a set of aluminium gears using the wooden gears as a pattern (yep, metal shrinks as it cools, so make the wooden gears to have nearly zero lash, and the Al gears will be acceptable for a low-tech machine.) for sand casting..
If? your gears have the correct curved tooth shape, (involute curve) then those have been developed over centuries to be the best wearing and least friction for there shape. And having two different materials will help with the wear most times. Like any gearing, once they did start to break down due to wear. Then as the sawdust from that wear pass through the gearing time after time, that will greatly accelerate further wear. And if I really was going to build an all wood clock? I'd want the best chance of it actually working and keeping reasonable time. So I'd use my mill, dividing head, and buy the proper gear cutters so I did end up with as accurate as possible gearing without any tight spots. I think I'd also choose a naturally oily wood also. Lignum Vitae would be one as someone else mentioned I think.
just love your angle on things. For me I would be wondering if a rack and pinion could be made from say wood or plastic or something that i could use successfully in a CNC type application. Anybody got any ideas??
I like this, but I'm pretty sure the load is way below what you'd need to show significant wear over a period of hours. I mean, plastic and aluminium gears work for years on low-load devices. Small tooth count gears and higher torque loads would obviously increase the tooth loading, if you're looking for some fun ol' destruction vids.
Hmmmm, there is a grain mill near where I live and some of the gears in that are over 100 years old. When I asked the docent about how long the gears last he said it depended on the wood but, that unless one breaks it is left alone. All the wood was white oak, cut to the gear shape after 2 years drying. It would take a LOOOOONG time to wear out the ply in your test, where-as the MDF should wear sooner. The plywood will harden on the edges where-as the MDF will flake away. Heat is the real killer, a faster rig, or more load (producing more heat) I think would result in a higher failure. Wood is an amazing material to use in a low stress low heat rig, like a mill.
You should have a look at dutch windmills. They run huge oak wood gears, lubricated with beeswax, and under high load (pumping water) they last for decades.
the only reason for metal gears is size and torque load. you can make a considerably smaller metal gear set to do the same load of work for lighter weight. you also need metal where the input torque load would simply just shear off the teeth of the gears. You maybe have 90rpm there at most with the gears being even. Several electric motors get upwards to 2500-3000rpm. More revolutions more chances for things to break down.
Machine that uses wooden gears for power transmission. Already exist. Clocks, windmills (use a different type of gear though, pin and lantern). One engineering maxim on geartrains. Always when possible use a gear with an odd number of teeth and on with a different number of odd or even number teeth. This allows for the maximum number of rotation before the same teeth mesh again. This distributes wear through the whole system
I'm sure it won't effect longevity, and I somewhat regret the inevitable slide to "let's just do it all with a computer", but I'd guess glowforge.com/ (or similar, if they exist) would be pretty good at cutting these gears - up to a certain size.
Great test! I am surprised that the MDF did not break down. Baltic birch is a good material for making gears but, aircraft plywood is my favorite material. It is expensive but very strong, stable and nice to work with. Perfect for small, fine pitch gears.
Wear is the result of heat. Heat is the result of friction. A lack of lubrication, running them under high speed or high load - or a combination of all of those would cause failure. low speed, low-moderate load applications, particularly with short run time would clearly be no issue.
What salve did you use as a lubricant? This is the first time since I subscribed (a little over a year ago) that I've seen you lubricate your wood gears; in general, would you say your contraptions aren't under a significant load to require lubricant?
Could you make helical or heringbone gears out of wood? If so, could you still use the same template , but just angle the cuts or would you need a different template?
@Matthias Wandel You don't happen to have a stream or some water near your property or such? You whom have so many motors and such laying around could surely make waterwheel on smaller scale to generate electricity using gears to see how much of energy you lose per gear wheel size along with perhaps adding breaks/resistance to the waterwheel to see if that improves the energy production. The latter part about the breaks is easiest just to direct some of the current made in low volt DC to some sort of metal to generate a electrical break. Should help to some degree. Cheerio.
Well, if you know a bit about clocks, you might know that there is an oak tower clock made by John Harrison that has been in continuous use since it was installed the 1720s. I believe the clock has only been stopped occasionally (maybe 3 or 4 times) for maintenance. It was made with brass pivots (hardly no steel was used in the clock due to moisture concerns that may cause rust) running in lignum vitae bearings (a naturally oily tropical wood). The clock needs no lubrication. The wheels were made with 1/4 sawn oak blanks, with sections of teeth inserted into the edges of the blanks, so that all the teeth would run radially for strength. I would think that the Baltic Birch plywood would last an exceptionally long time (perhaps eventually wearing a striped pattern into the mating gear). There are also several weight and spring driven clock kits that are made using BB ply.
Fascinating how folk think wood is weak forgetting all the previous centuries ocean travel in wooden ships & man of war, plus the wood mosquito fighter that out performed most metal fighter in world war 2
"Im sure glad i didn't try to use the hand drill to power this" Shots fired! haha. I'm sure Izzy will have a good chuckle when he sees this. As for a woodworking project, what about a pedal car using gears for the kiddo?
My dad once made a wood engine. It had wooden pistons, wooden camshafts, wooden gears and wooden valves. Wooden work either....
that actually made me laugh
wood pistons, lol
And you came out to be wooden too?
I would have loved to see it fire up for the first time!
If he made it out of morning wood he was screwed.
*Burgler breaking into basement of house, finds contraption with a spinning board attached*
+Owiko7 And did not read that Warning sticker on the window, which says, "No trespassing. Violators will get slapped in the face by a wooden-gear-testing device. Survivors will get spanked by said device."
This coment just made my day. 😂
Always good to test these things. You only have to look at the old windmills and watermills, at least in Europe, to see how wooden gears used to power the economy.
John Harrison, the man who invented the marine chronometer, built a turret clock (for Brocklesby Park, North Lincolnshire) in the 1720s with wooden gears (oak and Lignum vitae) and the clock is still working today. I read about him in the book Longitude. It took a lifetime for him to receive the reward for his invention of the chronometer due to him being a lowly carpenter and they refused to believe he could invent something that everyone else couldn't.
I checked out that book and started reading it today. Quite a coincidence that I also clicked on this video and read your comment.
@@robbystokoe5161 Coincidence isn't necessarily unusual.
Oak and Lignum vitae are both excellent choices for long lasting wooden gears.
Prime apple eating opportunity at 2:34.
+Jay Bates LOL!
+Jay Bates In slow motion.
+Jay Bates haha, i was waiting for him to open a bag of Doritos
n
bngM.
should make a clock, then when the clock stops you have an exact measure of how long they lasted
Clocks are a very low stress application, stacking the deck in the gears favor. Waych clickspring to see how slow those gears move
"Im sure glad i didn't try to use the hand drill to power this" Izzy Swan wink wink :D
That was exactly my thought....
+Sebastian Tarach That was the first thing that came to my mind. And I built Izzy's drill powered oscillating spindle sander.
I thought you were going to make a jacket from gears.
Wooden bike :)
+Gian Carlo Martinelli ; Yes that would be great! And if a wooden chain shows to be too difficult to make (or use), a cardan shaft drive, would be awesome imho.
Oh, and for spokes, long & tough fiber vines, made of withy (or so) would be lovely too :)
Got time for another project, Matthias? ;)
Wooden bike, wood'nt work!
+Matthew Smith My neighbor has one, although I've not seen it close enough to know if the gears are wooden.
Wood be nice
Seems to me that the logical next project should be a wooden Apache helicopter with wooden 30mm weapons systems.
all powered by a wood-chip burner turbine (made in wood of course)
if wear was a problem, which you have shown it isnt, could you line the gears with some metal?
That would be incredibly tedious,and you to size the gear for it so the teeth still mesh with the added thickness.
Otherwise, sure?
+jumpleadsx2 They used to use cast iron gears with wooden teeth in mills.
+Matthias Wandel very good
+Matthias Wandel but i believe that was to prevent sparks in flour mills. flour being highly flammable.
ryantoomanyhobbies When large amounts of it are airborne, yes.
That condition is fairly important.
Water mills and wind mills of old used apple wood gear teeth set into oak wheels. Apple wood has very good wear characteristics.
Hey Matthias, Make a 4 square test rig. This will increase the torque in the drive train and forces on the gears. Then your motor only has to overcome friction loses. Great video! Thanks, Jim
I downloaded your gear template program and I used those gears is a mechanical iris inside a nautical door. It's been over a year, the iris has been opened at least 1,000 times and they are still working perfectly! The gears fit together with such precision that I think they will last a lifetime.
It seems your bearings are slopping around, which would ultimately add to the demise.
You should have contacted some Dutch windmill conservators they would have told you that they have wooden gears in mills from late medieval times and are still running.
Wooden gears can last a very long time. In fact many early European clockmakers preferred to make their mechanism out of wood because wooden gears do not grind away at one another like metal gear trains do. Also as wood is porous, it can absorb oils and can be self lubricating. Some of these clocks are hundreds of years old and can still keep very accurate time. For example, in 1727,John Harrison who is the inventor of the first marine chronometer built his clock "Precision Pendulum no. 2"
At the time it was the most accurate clock in the world keeping time to give or take a second a month. It currently resides in the collection of the Leeds City Museum and its movement is made mainly of wood.
Thanks for all of your great videos, Keep up the good work!
I used baltic birch gears for the reduction on my power hacksaw and even after several hours they also didn't show any wear. I suspect that at low speed these gears will virtually last for ever.
Depending on the power consumption you would be willing to use, perhaps a gear driven long time running apparatus for that old barn or wooden gear driven heater for the upcoming winter of some sort. Small scale saw mill comes to mind. I suspect the electric motor will die before the wooden gears fail.
Hi Matthias, I like your experimental aproach. In the Netherlands all the old windmills use wooden gears. Alltough they are build as wooden disks with the tooth wedged in to them axialy because the main shafts are all at an angle. I think you might be interested to research this a bit, especially because for every component of the mill a species of wood is selected for its mechanical properties. Two things that I learned from a miller you might want to incoorporate in the power transmission aparatus that you plan to build:
1; use beeswax to grease the gears. This gives a thin but slick coating on the surface.
2; make sure that when you devide the amount of teeth of gear A trough the amount of teeth on gear B you don't get a whole number. This ensures that the same teeth meet occasionally and the ware on your teeth is even.
For power distribution this is ideal because you can reduce the play in the gears and thus the noise.
different sized gears would be cool to see too
n
Why not make one of those 100% wooden clock mechanisms? They look really nice too, and I'm sure you could find a way to make it accurate and easy to make :)
i would like to see a re-test with the gears under a more constant resistance/load. I think the wooden board's own momentum after spinning up sort of keeps the gears under less stress than say, if the motor were to spin against a dynamic braking system? Like the way trains use the resistance of the unpowered electric motors to slow down... Surely you know what im referring to? You are Matthias Wandel after all... :)
+brandon2076 That paddle has more air resistance than the ceiling fan had. I had to shorten it to not overload the motor.
+Matthias Wandel
yeah, but isnt the test for the gears, not the motor?
+brandon2076 How's he going to test the gears if he blows the motor?
+Sporky0
A stronger motor. I would like to see how the wooden gears would hold up behind more stress, more torque.
+Roger DC Yep, that's what I was asking. More load on the gears to see how/when they fail.
What about testing different loads? Or other testing like torque vs speed?
Also I am not surprised it lasted as long as it did. I thought this was going to be at least a multiple month test. Why not put it somewhere out of the way and leave it on until they break, or a few years?
Edit: oh I thought you just uploaded this, nope 5 years ago. UA-cam just decided to recommend it now.
I'd really like to see this taken all the way- like put it in the back corner of the shop in a box and leave it alone until it actually fails.
At one time long ago Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, DeSoto, Willy's, among other automobile manufacturers used pressed wood gears for timing gears in their engines. Oiled composite woods had to be strong to handle it.
It must be strong, because, before they use them for making windmills
There was only wood around.
Metal was to expansive
I can't understand why people are surprised
This looks like an automated spanking machine ;-)
Yeah, they used to have em back in the day:)
Another superb video. I had the feeling that those gears would last until the cows come home. There isn't that much wear in this application. Not to belittle your efforts which I find to be exemplary. I do think that the massive wooden "fan" blade was overkill but then again, I like overkill. Such as when you jump on your finished projects to demonstrate their strength.
"My roflcopter goes soi soi soi"
Ford flathead V8 engines had wooden timing gears sane as Dodge and Willys Jeeps. They even used them in later Windsor V8's to.
I want to see +Photonicinduction try this test. See what it really takes to break them. I think that would be quite a show.
+john papple That would be an awesome idea!
Awwww I popped it!
I say spin it with an 1kW induction motor and give it a larger board to spin, surely that would make the gears fail within a day
mCann
I love these experiment style videos you have been doing
You should try to make an All Wood pendulum clock.
I remember seeing one at an art exhibit and have always wanted to know how to make one.
look up ronald walters channel.
NordboDK ooOOo he has my last name... I wonder if we're related
+Joshua Walters
I've made one - was worried about it wearing out - no need to worry!!
Try googling "wooden clock" and "plans". Lots of plans on the internet, but start with something simple. And start making the escapement as that is the most difficult parts to get right. (And when the escapement is working, the clock is alive and just need some more gears). A clock is a quite simple machine.
+Joshua Walters, + Matthias Wandel. I agree... Matthias, You were looking for a project using gears in power transmission, this would be a good project. You can add lots of gears to do different things than just hours and minutes. Try seconds and Lunar phases to increase the use of wood gears.
I wonder if your results would be different if you used MDF on MDF and the same with the plywood under a reasonable load like a single person lift?
+Roger DC UHMW PE is a good material for some applications, but it will deform under the loads gears impose on each other. It's just not stiff enough. Maybe with large/wide enough teeth it could do the job.On the other hand, it's perfectly workable with wood working gears.
I'd like to see the moment his wife walks in on that thing running, while he is sitting in a chair staring at it
Matthias: It's not what it looks like
Hahaha........ Mathias, you continue to amaze me with your ingenuity and sense of humor. Another good one!!
More load. Make a Wöhler curve!
you could make a model biplane wit that i would love to see that
I have an idea for a long-term test setup. Make a several 1:10 reductions in series, and hook the slowest gear up to your mechanical counter. With enough reduction, the counter would have a rather long duration. Besides, it would be interesting to see the difference in wear across the reduction chain.
Windmill used wooden gears for centuries and it worked just fine.
Time to make a wooden airplane?
Maybe you should put it on a router, I'm sure something will happen!
Matthias did you try to build planetary gear? It would be interesting to see if a high reduction ratio is possible.
Well you used a fan motor ,how about using a fan blade and re-purposing it back into a fan..
Hey Matthias, what about a washing machine all made of wood? Apart of being an awesome project you could evaluate your wooden gears performance.
......love the tests shows.......learn something everytime.............maybe a clock would be wooden gear project..........been around for yrs....
Wood gear clock sounds like it might fit the bill for a project where wooden gears are used to transmit power.
Nothing like testing your fan motor on a Baker fan....
Legend has it that it’s still running till this day. New home owners are trying to figure out what that clanking noise is
Man, you must be so board.
Try make a completely wooden clock, with wooden escapement and all that. ClickSpring is doing one out of brass, so I think it'd be fitting if you did one out of 'premium' wood :D
I saw a windmill powered sawmill. I bet you could build one.
Ceiling fan motor was good choice for this since they are low speed high torque and can run at high slip with out burning up
Wooden geared clocks are another thing that shows that wood gears can be made to last since most of those date back 200 or more years... speaking of wood geared clocks ever going to make one?
The harder material will always consumer the softer. For best longevity I would go with the same wood for all mesh parts. That will last longest. Even if you had to option of two pine gears, or an oak and a pine gear. I'm pretty sure the two pine gears would last longer as they would resist destroying each other.
+YeCannyDaeThat Consumer? Automatic spellcheck strikes again.
+dlwatib Damn. Consume.
I was thinking the same thing. If you have a harder and a softer material the softer one will get all the wear.
This might be useful in a drive train when it is extremely difficult to replace one gear.
+YeCannyDaeThat Yep! nevertheless if your ratio is not 1:1 you can always use softer material in the big one since its teeth are less times in contact
+YeCannyDaeThat nope, there's still the same energy applied that needs to be transferred, and same amount of joules will destroy the same amount of material divided by their UTS in a taken finite element.
But there is a value before which material is able to completely recover, so if your elements stay in it - your item will idealy be inderstructible.
I.e. when you need to triple your speed by means of gears, if you make two gears - a large one and a small one - surfaces of both gear's teeth will be loaded to the point of destruction (even if it's very small and will take weeks or months to become visible). But if you make three or four smaller gears from same amount of material (i.e. instead 60 to 20 teeth you make 30 to 20 to 10 optionally to another 10 for reverse direction) the same force will spread proportionally between bigger summary surface and will wear out slower or not at all.
I built a wooden clock with gears almost 8 years ago. I'd expect it to continue working for decades if not hundreds of years. I can't see any evidence of wear in my clock gears. They are made from baltic birch plywood. I got the design from Clayton Boyer, the clock is called Simplicity.
That was great. I'm thinking of making wooden pulleys as idler pulleys.. It's gonna be on a 17 horse power briggs motor, turning a 42 inch propeller.. hard and fast.. the pulleys are only gonna be idlers pulleys.. I think it might work..
Volvo B series auto engines have a fiber timing gear. They wear, but it takes decades. They also operate at thousands of RPM, with the whole valve train as a load.
have you done a torque test? i think the weak point would be near the axle. i'm slowly getting around to making my first gearbox, and i've used your online gear generator to print and glue them. Cheers!
Amazing test! this is what i was looking for! Thank you man, seriously. I love this kind of experiments. Have an amazing day!
Of course the wooden gears and wooden bearings in (Dutch) windmills last many many decades, even when used daily, but they use special kinds of wood like Mispel (mespius germanica, "Groenhart" (bowwood), Demarara, "Pokhout" (Gualacum officinale), Azijnhout (Qeurcus ilex), most likely not Baltic plywood.
Well, it all comes down too how well the gears are made, how well they are set up, and how well they are maintained. If the gears are made accurately there will be no excessive contact on the teeth slowing down wear. If the gears are spaced properly, not to tight to enable binding and not so far apart to enable slipping and grinding is another factor. Also whether having the shafts in bearings or not and whether they were lubricated is another factor. And lastly, keep them clean and and in the case of a continuously running machine keep them lubricated.
I would like to see a another test. Use a stronger motor, to put far more torque on the gears. Also use the same type of wood, for the gears. Perhaps 2 tests one with MDF gears and one with plywood, to compare which one is best for gears.
This is great research! Now ... tell me how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop.
+Heavyboxes 1, 2, 3, crunch.
+Heavyboxes go ask mr owl
We all would like to know that! 😎
Is it mechanically feasible to build a manual wooden transmission? That would be a pretty neat demo of wooden gears.
Just an obscure comment- typically you don't see 1:1 (or 1:2, 1:3, etc.) gears in anything designed for long life- you want gear numbers without common factors. This way you don't have the same teeth contacting repeatedly- so any flaw (either in the gear at the start or one that occurs as damage or wear) doesn't hammer the same spot on the other gear, but rather is spread out over all of them. Say a bit of casting grit goes through the gears- it might embed in one tooth and then over time destroy the teeth it contacts. It's better to spread the wear over the whole gear set- it'll keep running- rather than beating one tooth to failure. And even wear sounds "even", rather than a spot going "rump rump rump". :)
On cars- you notice you don't ever see a 3:1 or 4:1 rear end ratio? Always odd numbers like 3.73, 4:10, 4.11, etc.? So, a 4.10 typically has a 10 tooth pinion and 41 tooth ring- 41 is prime, no common factor with 10. A 4.11 would be 9 & 37... again no common factors. 3:73 comes in at 11 & 41, nothing but primes!
Clever automotive geeks! (though I'm sure they copied steam engineers... who copied someone else)
once and for all you've proven birch ply is harder than MDF. I think it would've been slightly fairer to run the gears in a matching set and see which one lasts longer- because an MDF gear won't chew into another MDF gear as aggressively as ply wood would. Albeit for the hand-turned jig gears, unless you're name is Schwarzenegger and you get extremely frustrated with it, they shouldn't wear out. (even if they were softer MDF- they're not really "load bearing", or atleast not bearing much of a load).
If it was for a driveline of some kind- I'd probably go with a hybrid- the gears which are particularly hard to replace/cut/repair etc. make out of the hardest wood you can justify, and for the mating gears use a high-density MDF. That way, you pick the gear that will wear out to be the easier ones to replace/repair. (in the same way that they use brass for synchro gears, and hardened steel for the drive gears in a manual)
You can use a larger module or pitch diameter and wider gears to increase wear resistance and power transfer capacity. With the right kind of wood, you'll laugh at the plastic POM or acetal gears in cheaper tools. For noise, you could go helical or even herringbone* gears. But how to make those with your tools, that's way beyond me (herringbones are just 2 helicals opposing each other, the Citroën chevron is based on those).
You are a carpenter and a man of science. I've been following you for years, but with different accounts. Greetings from TDF Argentina
If you want to test the durability of wooden gears, might I suggest you go for a much finer gear where any wear would be more obvious.
I'd say the biggest problem with using MDF for any moving part that interacts with another, would be seasonal changes. Since depending on the grade of the material the MDF can expand, which if the whole machine was just MDF gears could cause problems since you would have to always have that machine in a temperature controlled areas as to keep it from expanding during seasonal change.
Of course I could be over thinking this.
I had made crossbow with wood...I tested it for what draw weight of bow it can hold and it goes over 10 kg....then the string breaks but no damage to mechanism....but I could pull only 4 kg bow so I use underpowered bow...
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question, when it comes to gears specifically, wouldn't it be better to impregnate the wood with epoxy or resin with the help of a vacuum chamber ? or even plastic, just melt a couple of bottles in the oven at 210°C and then make gears out of it the same way ? Wood lives, plastic doesn't.
You are really only looking for gross visual wear, wouldn't measuring the original backlash versus the final backlash be a more scientific case?
Next what torque load will this gear survive? lol.
Using a rig like this to run in the gears (ie lap a pair together) could actually allow for a better running "machine, just needs some adjustment on the shaft spacing to allow the shafts to be varied to reduce the lash as the gears "lap" to each other.
Once you have a nicely worn-in gear, next step, cast a set of aluminium gears using the wooden gears as a pattern (yep, metal shrinks as it cools, so make the wooden gears to have nearly zero lash, and the Al gears will be acceptable for a low-tech machine.) for sand casting..
If? your gears have the correct curved tooth shape, (involute curve) then those have been developed over centuries to be the best wearing and least friction for there shape. And having two different materials will help with the wear most times. Like any gearing, once they did start to break down due to wear. Then as the sawdust from that wear pass through the gearing time after time, that will greatly accelerate further wear.
And if I really was going to build an all wood clock? I'd want the best chance of it actually working and keeping reasonable time. So I'd use my mill, dividing head, and buy the proper gear cutters so I did end up with as accurate as possible gearing without any tight spots. I think I'd also choose a naturally oily wood also. Lignum Vitae would be one as someone else mentioned I think.
just love your angle on things. For me I would be wondering if a rack and pinion could be made from say wood or plastic or something that i could use successfully in a CNC type application. Anybody got any ideas??
I like this, but I'm pretty sure the load is way below what you'd need to show significant wear over a period of hours. I mean, plastic and aluminium gears work for years on low-load devices. Small tooth count gears and higher torque loads would obviously increase the tooth loading, if you're looking for some fun ol' destruction vids.
Hmmmm, there is a grain mill near where I live and some of the gears in that are over 100 years old. When I asked the docent about how long the gears last he said it depended on the wood but, that unless one breaks it is left alone. All the wood was white oak, cut to the gear shape after 2 years drying. It would take a LOOOOONG time to wear out the ply in your test, where-as the MDF should wear sooner. The plywood will harden on the edges where-as the MDF will flake away. Heat is the real killer, a faster rig, or more load (producing more heat) I think would result in a higher failure. Wood is an amazing material to use in a low stress low heat rig, like a mill.
You should have a look at dutch windmills. They run huge oak wood gears, lubricated with beeswax, and under high load (pumping water) they last for decades.
Thats cool Matthias. I never thought they would last that long. Well done.
You should take a look at overcomplicateted light switches, might be a cool project.
Sorry for my bad english :)
the only reason for metal gears is size and torque load. you can make a considerably smaller metal gear set to do the same load of work for lighter weight. you also need metal where the input torque load would simply just shear off the teeth of the gears. You maybe have 90rpm there at most with the gears being even. Several electric motors get upwards to 2500-3000rpm. More revolutions more chances for things to break down.
Machine that uses wooden gears for power transmission. Already exist. Clocks, windmills (use a different type of gear though, pin and lantern). One engineering maxim on geartrains. Always when possible use a gear with an odd number of teeth and on with a different number of odd or even number teeth. This allows for the maximum number of rotation before the same teeth mesh again. This distributes wear through the whole system
I'm sure it won't effect longevity, and I somewhat regret the inevitable slide to "let's just do it all with a computer", but I'd guess glowforge.com/ (or similar, if they exist) would be pretty good at cutting these gears - up to a certain size.
Great test! I am surprised that the MDF did not break down. Baltic birch is a good material for making gears but, aircraft plywood is my favorite material. It is expensive but very strong, stable and nice to work with. Perfect for small, fine pitch gears.
Wear is the result of heat. Heat is the result of friction. A lack of lubrication, running them under high speed or high load - or a combination of all of those would cause failure. low speed, low-moderate load applications, particularly with short run time would clearly be no issue.
It would be interesting to see or evaluate where a wood gear would be favorable over a metal one
So I guess we can conclude that MDF is a perfectly reasonable choice?
+Nick Welch I'm afraid so.
What salve did you use as a lubricant? This is the first time since I subscribed (a little over a year ago) that I've seen you lubricate your wood gears; in general, would you say your contraptions aren't under a significant load to require lubricant?
Could you make helical or heringbone gears out of wood? If so, could you still use the same template , but just angle the cuts or would you need a different template?
@Matthias Wandel
You don't happen to have a stream or some water near your property or such? You whom have so many motors and such laying around could surely make waterwheel on smaller scale to generate electricity using gears to see how much of energy you lose per gear wheel size along with perhaps adding breaks/resistance to the waterwheel to see if that improves the energy production.
The latter part about the breaks is easiest just to direct some of the current made in low volt DC to some sort of metal to generate a electrical break. Should help to some degree.
Cheerio.
I tried using your gear generator website today and I couldn't get it to print to scale, I didn't know how to adjust the DPI... help!
There's a famous clock in England that is 300 years old made out of lignum vitae wood and is still running to this day without lubrication.
have you ever tried to cut gears in angle? that would be much less noisy.
Well, if you know a bit about clocks, you might know that there is an oak tower clock made by John Harrison that has been in continuous use since it was installed the 1720s. I believe the clock has only been stopped occasionally (maybe 3 or 4 times) for maintenance. It was made with brass pivots (hardly no steel was used in the clock due to moisture concerns that may cause rust) running in lignum vitae bearings (a naturally oily tropical wood). The clock needs no lubrication. The wheels were made with 1/4 sawn oak blanks, with sections of teeth inserted into the edges of the blanks, so that all the teeth would run radially for strength. I would think that the Baltic Birch plywood would last an exceptionally long time (perhaps eventually wearing a striped pattern into the mating gear). There are also several weight and spring driven clock kits that are made using BB ply.
Fascinating how folk think wood is weak forgetting all the previous centuries ocean travel in wooden ships & man of war, plus the wood mosquito fighter that out performed most metal fighter in world war 2
What about moisture? Would prolonged exposure to humidity wear them out quicker or even lock them up?
"Im sure glad i didn't try to use the hand drill to power this" Shots fired! haha. I'm sure Izzy will have a good chuckle when he sees this.
As for a woodworking project, what about a pedal car using gears for the kiddo?
do something on the idea of the old Craftsman Router Crafter.