VRC Gear Drive Fusion 360

[Avaliable]

Hi! I’m pretty new to CAD and I’m building my team’s VRC robot in Fusion 360.

Our robot has a gear drive, but I can’t seem to get the inserts into the gears using joints. Is there an easier way to get the inserts into the gears? I also am having trouble lining the teeth on the gears up correctly. I have been looking around for YouTube tutorials as well, but I can’t seem to find any, so if you know of one that involves using gears in Fusion 360, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[ezl]

If you double click to highlight your insert, you can hit the button to set a custom pivot after hitting M to move it. Now, click the face you want to have an insert against to move it. Repeat it again to get it fully aligned, and do it for the final time to move it into the hole completely. I’ll make another post in a second with more pictures.

[ezl]

Alright, here’s a step by step way to do it. This works for any part in general, not just placing the insert in a gear or wheel.

Fig. 1:

Insert is horribly malaligned.

Fig. 2:

After highlighting your part, hit the button I mentioned in the previous post. Click on the face you want to align, and hit the green check mark on the right.

Fig. 3:

Now, drag the part a bit towards your desired direction to tell fusion 360 which way you’re going.

Click the face you want to move it to. The image above shows that fusion automatically moved it to match your selected face with the face you clicked.

NOTE: You may need to do the previous steps twice to get the insert fully aligned as it might be off on the x and y axis.

Fig. 4:

Highlight the part again, and set the pivot on the face again. This time, you set the pivot on the face that’s facing towards the gear. This is the final step where we put the insert into the gear.

Fig. 5:

Hit the green checkmark, and move the part slightly towards the gear. After you finish all of that, click the face again. Boom! You have a perfectly placed insert.

Once you’re done moving it, you can highlight both parts and right click. Find rigid join to join them together.

As for your question with aligning the teeth on the gears, you have to just rotate the gears to match the teeth up correctly. They do not match by default.

Summary:
The pivot method to align parts face-to-face is a way to put the insert into gear perfectly. Even though it looks like a lot of steps, it only takes a few seconds with someone that’s used to it. Also, don’t forget to rigid join your insert to your gear so it moves with it when it gets animated. Hope you found this useful.

[Bob132]

The method above definitely works, but there is an easier way to do it.

First, open the Joint tool which can be done by pressing the J key. Then select the round inside edge of the insert, and it will place the join origin in the center. This is the component that will move.

After that, mouse over the flat face on the gear and then hold down the control or command key. While holding the key down, move your mouse to the snap point in the middle of the face and click on it.

The insert will then move to the gear and be perfectly alined. Just click ok and the joint is done.

Another option would be to use the VEX CAD Fusion 360 library, which comes with pre-joined inserts in the gears which can be changed out easily using the add-in.

VEX CAD Fusion 360 Parts Library Release Log

Version 1.0.0 Aidan and George from @thirddegree, @andrewef2000, and I are proud to announce the release of the VEX CAD Library for Fusion 360! This library is based on the hard work done by the contributors of the VEX CAD Inventor Library. This parts library includes a number of parametric parts such as adjustable length C-channels and gears with swappable inserts that can be edited using our custom add-in. The add-in is not required to use this library but is highly suggested for your ease …

[Roboter]

try the new protobot software imo

[9MotorGang]

@Avaliable, in the future, please just like the posts in the thread instead of reviving a dead thread.