This week’s selection are the High Speed 3D Printed Gears by YouTuber Canocholic.
This project is an unusual experiment with a unique goal: spin a gear faster than the speed of sound. The approach would be to design a series of interlocking gears that would step up hand-cranked motion all the way to the speed of sound, around 343 meters per second.
The design seems to be the most critical aspect of this project, as translating human cranking into high speeds requires calculating a series of gear ratios.
The gears themselves have to fit together, and this requires more calculations to ensure compatibility. The herringbone gear design was simplified by pasting small gears directly on top of large gears.
Measuring the speed of the final gear during the test was done post-test by counting revolutions of the crank and multiplying by the gear ratio. This was then converted into the linear speed of the outside edge of the final gear. The first test resulted in a spin of 434km/hr, fast but less than the speed of sound.
A second test yielded 537km/hr, an incredible speed — but still less than the speed of sound. Canoholic has ideas on how to speed up the device, but has not yet done so.
Via YouTube
