Where to Find Axles, Gears For Kinetic Sculpture?

sneakyimp writes "My brother is an architect and sculptor and wants to create kinetic sculptures powered by wind, steam, and sun. He wants to avoid electrical systems and keep this mechanical. He's prepared to cast metals for custom parts if necessary, but is hoping to find a cheap source of gears, axles, and bearings for the internal mechanical workings of these contraptions. We'll need things like miter/bevel/spur/helical gears, standard and thrust bearings, and axles." Read on below for more on the details of what sneakyimp is looking for — dismembered Capsela units won't do it.

sneakyimpo continues: "These parts won't need to support much power or torque (probably less than 1 horsepower / 550 ft-lbs). Ideally, we could get a kit which contains a variety of bevel and spur gears, a few axles, and standardized connect interfaces — kind of like a box of Legos for tinkering and prototyping. I found the Stock Drive Products site and it looks like an extensive catalog, but one really needs to know what one is looking for and I don't think we're there yet. I've also found custom gear manufacturers and cheap plastic hobby kits but these are either too outrageously expensive or ridiculously under qualified for the job at hand.

I was wondering if any of you robot builders or mechanical engineers could recommend a good starter kit with an assortment of gears or perhaps a supplier that deals in appropriately spec'ed gears rather than industrial-strength SUV transmissions."

Off the top of my head

[stubob]

Spare bike parts. Should be cheap, strong enough for a couple hp, pretty standard. More chain drive than gear drive, but the idea is the same. Lots of variety in bearings.

An old self-propelled lawnmower should have a belt drive to satisfy your requirements as well.

Are blenders direct drive, or are they gear reduction? 500 watts is around 1 hp, so that could work too.

How about a bike shop?

[Steel Shepherd]

Meshing gears are far more expensive than chain & sprockets and require greater precision when installed or they'll wear out quickly. They also need more protection from the elements and do not like at all to be dirty. As for axles, I assume your friend can weld a shaft onto a standard spindle. If you can afford timing belts and toothed sprockets, you can maybe eliminate the need to regularly lubricate the thing - so long as you use sealed bearings. If you insist on gears, try Boston Gear and they'll tell you who your local vendors are.

Find your local heat treat shop.

[phrackwulf]

Your average heat treater is going to have gears and pieces that get screwed up during nitriding or other operations. Since you are doing sculptures, its quite possible you don't need the case hardening that a regular customer needs. See if you can find a shop that does a lot of pinion and sun gears for example, then offer to buy on the cheap things they can't fix in re-work. Since its a sculpture, you probably don't need to go custom on some of the sizes.

Make your own

[uqbar]

Eric Freitas [ericfreitas.com] is an artist/clock maker that makes all his gears, screws, etc. by hand. He has step by step photos showing his techniques on his site if you want examples on how it's done.

The absolute best book

[EmbeddedJanitor]

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Hundred-Seven-Mechanical-Movements/dp/1879335638/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in [amazon.com]

It has mechanisms and mechanical ideas that you'd never have thought of to do all sorts of interesting movements - ideal for any dynamic sculptures etc.

And while you're looking for power sources, consider Stirling machines. Unlike steam, they don't use water so can't boil dry.

Making gears

[Anonymous Coward]

You could make your own gears using this gear template generator

http://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html [woodgears.ca]

Big Blue Saw

[chroma]

I would like to put in an entirely self-promoting word for Big Blue Saw [bigbluesaw.com]. 12 pitch (and possibly finer) gears come out just fine when waterjet cutting, and can be a lot cheaper than having custom gears made at a gear specialist. See my photos of an aluminum gear made for a fighting robot [google.com].

Also something to consider..

[Markimedes]

First of two, there is a neat range of stuff at
http://www.robotmarketplace.com/ [robotmarketplace.com]

Second of two, you can do nifty things with just steam and pistons, but I assume you'll be doing that anyway.. =p

Re:check the KSR community

[steveha]

Google is your friend. There are so many different groups doing Kinetic Sculpture Races... do some searches, find their various web pages. If you live near one of the big races, you might be able to meet people in real life.

But what the heck, I did a few Google searches for you. Here's a few links:

How to Build a Kinetic Racing Sculpture [kinetickingdom.com]

Links from Kinetic Kingdom [kinetickingdom.com]

Resources from Kinetic Kensington (in Philadelphia) [kinetickensington.org]

Several of those web sites have mailing lists (maybe just for news of the specific race, maybe for general kinetic sculpture discussion, who knows). The first link has a mailto: link from the author ("Elliott Naess") and you could try sending him email to ask his advice.

That http://kinetickingdom.com/ [kinetickingdom.com] site is a major resource. It's from the oldest kinetic sculpture racing group, in Ferndale, CA.

steveha

Re:Mod parent up

[Khyber]

Want a source of axles, chain drive, gears, etc?

Raid busted Xerox machines, the large ones you find in offices. I've rebuilt my bike totally from Xerox machine parts.