3D printing Viewer question short - How do you figure out axel spacing of meshed gears in FreeCAD

[@alexjh47]

And in FreeCAD you can make a reference to those values in your other measurements, so that when you change them, anything referencing those values automatically updates.

[@felixjohnson3874]

I'm as much of a simp for freecad as anyone (IMO its just super stupid to build a skillbase on any proprietary offering you can't ensure you'll always have access to, moralism aside) but literally any decent CAD program can do this. Parametric modeling is basically just a requirement for CAD.

[@SLCompulsion]

I am really struggling to make that work. For example, I would like to reference the outer-diameter parameter in my spreadsheet and it just doesn't work. I've just loaded the latest 1.0.0 release. The Gear add-on isn't under 'official' FreeCAD so maybe they got something wrong. I've spent hours today and every time I add a gear the model goes to crap. Very fustrating.

[@RESlusher]

Thanks, Kevin! Now you're making me want to sell an organ or two to buy a 3D printer! 😁

[@felixjohnson3874]

Unless you want to get into multi-material printing or engineering filaments there are actuslly a ton of really good options for cheap right now. FLsun delta printers are obscenely cheap right now for example. Deltas give great speeds and great precision, (rivaling and exceeding 1-2k coreXYs) but their main downside is that they're a bit physically large for their build area. For as cheap as they are right now though, if you don't want to print anything that needs a heated chamber like ABS or ASA, they're kinda a steal. Bambu is the other common suggestion but tbh personally I don't see very much special about them.

[@Charles-g5d7k]

Your talent abounds. 🛵