Bevel gears in Fusion 360 - plugin (update, version basic)

Hello again! Today I’ll talk about the update of bevel gears maker in basic version. It contains significant changes so I think it is worth to hear about. As usual, it should take two to three weeks to be available in the store. All buyers will be notified when new package will appear for download and all links will be available under the video. If you like this, please thumbs up and subscribe the channel.

00:37 - Most important difference is that I decided to merge and extend functionalities of basic and medium versions. According to this change, now it is available to create external and internal shafts from 10 to 160 degrees. If you use medium or advanced version, you notified that for high or low angles of shafts all set can be located very high or low. It was changed and now set is centered in the Y-axis no matter what value of shaft angle is. But if you want the value of shift you can get it from descriptions of components.

01:24 - “Y” parameter contains this value so if you need to move gears to match cone apex with global center you can use it as shift in Y-axis. I’ll talk about whole description later. If you saw my previous videos about planetary gears and racks maker you know that there’s of course more improvements. The same is here. Algorithm for better generating of tooth has been used in bevels too. Due to this root fillet radius of gears has been removed because no matter tooth has undercut or not it will be always cut accurate and in a high precision. The only thing to do is to set the clearance as should be.

02:07 - Another useful thing is the ability for changing tooth’s width. Now you can set it to manual and change if you need. There’s also an option for making 1:1 shafts, so pinion and wheel can have the same number of teeth. Autoloading of last used parameters which is a standard in my other plugins is also available. Backward compatibility works. So if you have some files with parameters and you didn’t change them manually they should be read without any problems.

02:43 - The only warnings or errors will be visible when some parameter exceeds range, nothing else. Less important change in case of bevels is the fact that crest width (top land thickness) less than ¹⁄₁₀ of module doesn’t block the process. If you need such sharp teeth for any reason - you’ll get them. Ok. They were a changes more under the hood. Let’s talk about UI make-up. Ugly, big and old-style buttons have been unified and standarized as in my previous plugins. On the top of window there appeard a “Menu” section with save, load and reset buttons moved from the bottom.

03:31 - Right below there are buttons to select preview: no preview, standard 3D and 3D with descriptions. These coarse models doesn’t show every aspect of gears but they’re enough to see basic dimensions of all set and can be very helpful at the initial stage of planning. Now you no longer need to run this and waiting for results to see what will happen. Descriptions show few other parameters like pitch diameter (d), pitch cone angle (δ), virtual pitch radius ®, number of virtual teeth (zv) and cone distance (Re - common value). Last input in this area is the checkbox for adding joints automatically.

04:10 - If you want to quickly check gears in motion, this option is for you. Defining motion links is also simpler. When we back to the descripions of components we’ll see more parameters than “Y” mentioned before. In the “Motion link formulas…” section you can find expressions for proper motion link. Let’s say, we want to define a motion link between the pinion and wheel so the first joint belongs to pinion (input) second to wheel (output) and we need to get this formula. No “reverse” or other clicks needed. “Add chamfers?” checkbox has been replaced by buttons.

05:03 - Option which also should help is estimated time. Of course, fresh installed plugin will not show statistics, but over time you’ll get better and better estimation. File with statistics is located in the same folder as last used parameters. It contains no more than 100 last results for most important operations. Estimated time is rounded up to first 10 seconds. Another change is that the gears are created in a new document using direct design. Progress window has been also improved. It displays better described and more atomic steps so now it is better seen what’s going on. It also contains button for cancelling process if you need but remember that long-running operations can postpone cancel until finish first so for biggest gears (300 teeth/40mm module) it can last over 10 seconds. Small but useful feature are axes. They can be simple obtain manually from cirular edges but plugin creates them automatically. Description of parameters have been improved too.

06:27 - They’re also appeared toolclips which explains what parameters mean. In basic version there’s no other option than straight teeth. Spiral and zerol remains in advanced version but this plugin will be also modified, fixed and extended of hypoid gears - be patient. If you use a new UI (toolbars), the plugin will be visible in a new tab “Shwivel” in “Design” workspace. I suggest to uninstall the older version and close the Fusion before installing a new one.

07:24 - Sometimes it may also be necessary to reset customization in the “Create” panel in “Solid” tab to remove duplicated plugin’s icon from the old place. Ok, so try this in action. New version should appear in the store in this month. I have all the feedback from you about improvements but be patient, updates and fixes in other plugins are also underway. Thank you for watching this and see you next time. Bye. .