Accurately Estimating Capacity When Designing Plastic Gears Using Integrated Gear Software
Certain parameters hold true when designing all gears, including plastic:
- Use of conjugate tooth forms.
- Maintaining contact ratios greater than 1.00.
- Minimizing specific sliding, thus improving efficiency.
- Minimizing tooth deflections.
- Keeping working stresses below material strengths to insure adequate service life.
Jim Marsch, our in-house gear expert, recently wrote about these and other topics pertaining to plastic gear design for an article that appeared on the IDES website. Click here to read the full article.
Labels: gear design, gear software, Integrated Gear Software, plastic gear design
Deciding Whether to Use the TK or Excel Version of Roark's Formulas
Customers sometimes ask how they should decide which version of Roark's Formulas to purchase - the TK Solver version, or the Excel version. Here's a bit of guidance:
Our TK Solver version of Roark’s Formulas uses the TK Solver interface and provides direct access to all the formulas, unit conversions, formats, etc. It will take a bit longer to learn all the capabilities but will be more flexible in the long term.
The Excel version of Roark’s Formulas uses Excel as the interface and the TK Solver math models are automatically called as subroutines from within Excel. It’s easy to use right away.
Those who are most interested in a familiar Excel interface should use the Excel version. Those who would like to add TK Solver’s features to their tool box and occasionally “get under the hood” should go with the TK version.
Labels: Excel, roark's formulas, TK Solver
