Making Gears From Scratch 

In the beginning, love it. "The cost of metal gears is very reasonable...so I bought the tools to make them instead"

Here I was proud of making a 520 chain sprocket with a grinder a Dremel a hand file set and a drill. Took me like 3.5 hrs to make but it lasted on my dirt bike for 2years of hard daily trail riding.

I'm watching your channel for 3 evenings straight and have no idea how this channel doesn't have much more viewers. Once the youtube algorithm picks up on this channel, that will change, I guess. You are doing a lot of projects that are useful and affordable for hobbyists. You have quite a few inspiring videos. Thanks for that!

80 Gears?...Pfft!...…you'll knock that over on a Saturday! the biggest question becomes how many gears do you have you can replace?...Lathe ,mill, coffee machine, dishwasher....etc... Awesome to see someone explaining it is not the convenience of buying gears but the satisfaction of making your own. Keep up the good work.....Long live the hacksaw!

This Old Tony did a great explanation video of module involute gear geometry and how these cutters cut (more or less) the correct involute.

Thanks for sharing a very informative vid. It's always better to make it yourself whenever possible. Having control over the materials used makes a huge difference at times.

None of are here because we wanted the cheap route. Or the easy route. Or the logical route... Were here because we make stuff! Haha You delivered that line perfectly.

Loved the comment at the end about tricking yourself into believing you’re saving money. Found your channel a few months ago and immediately subscribed. Great videos!! Always look forward to your releases.

Having worked in the public sector for 41 years and now retired, I can most certainly understand spending many dollars to save a few. I do it myself on occasion, depending on what I want to purchase. Subscribed.

Nice demonstration of cutting gears. Can't wait to do this myself!

Great little project dude. Making gears is on my list of projects too just getting around to purchasing the dividing head. Really enjoyed and well executed.

Wonderful work, wonderful tools, wonderful passion... 👏👏👏 Thanks, whish you all the best.

Great video. Looking forward to see what other projects that will use gears you have created.

Always look forward to your videos. So informational!

nice project - if we wanted to save money we wouldn't have a hobby lathe :)

Nice work , good watch , look forward to next one , thanks for sharing 👌🏼

For just a little bit more, you can make it yourself. But you learn something along the way, and you build up your library of tools. Pretty soon, you can make things that are just not available.

Cool project and nicely done! Why purchasing a full set of metal gears when you can have just the gear cutters for double the price :D Like that ! ;)

Got a good chuckle out of "As long as I make 80 gears..." You'll never hear me say you can't spend money or time to make something just because you had to had to and for no other reason. :)

Another enjoyable educational video, thank you, well done! cheers

yep - I always learn something when I watch your content 👍😎👍

Loved the video. i've had aluminum gears on my south bend 9c for years trick i learned from one of your countryman Rob from Xynudu! thanks again for a great video

excellent innovation ❤❤

Thanks for making the video and sharing. I'm on the same pathway myself. My Chinese Mini Lathe came with a metric lead screw and none of the change gears needed for cutting imperial threads with any degree of accurate pitch. I have the same dividing head that you do. I'll be able to make all the needed gears except for a 57 tooth gear with the dividing head and dividing plates as they stand. I figured I could create a replacement direct dividing plate, replace the existing geared indexing pin with the pin ground down to 0.125. I would create the plate in the mill using my DRO to make the hole circle.

Nice work on the gear cutting.

Really well done.

nicely done and explained

Excellent job man,

Great video! Thanks mate!

My boy: Cutting gears! Also my boy: using a hack saw lol

I love it! Eighty or so gears. It sounds like your decision making process aligns with mine...... 😄 haha.

Love it. I have the same dividing head, haven’t used it yet. This tutorial helped.

Super! Thank you very much!

Great video and I'm sure we all hate buying parts that we can make ourselves for 3 times the time and money. Only thing I seem to have missed is how you did the keyway - it's what I am trying to figure out how to do soon on my gears

You know the definition of a machinist? “Someone who buys thousands of dollars worth of machinery for making dollars worths of parts”. 😂 And my addition to that is “…and is quite happy to do so.”. In short: not the cheapest or fastest option but certainly the most satisfying. And a flexible one too as you are now able to make just about any gear you may ever need. 👍

One possible project(which I would love to see a video of) would be to find a way to flange a permanent fixture to the gear train in order to fit bigger (or more, for that matter) gears and slow down the powerfeed to more managable speeds.

NICE JOB!

Very interesting.

Hi, well done and thanks for sharing your interesting video

Pretty cool!

Thanks for sharing!

For light cuts like you usually have to take, give some aluminum inserts a try. They're super cheap, sharp as a cats claw and work really well on steel. - No, you can't take 70 though depth cuts with them, even on big machines, but they work great for the type of work you do - and require a lot less cutting pressure.

Never understood machinist logic: convincing himself that 60 bucks is A LOT, spending 300 bucks, and sleeping well after all... sounds reasonable :D Nice video again!

I wanted to just say that I have watched lots of your videos and have really enjoyed them (despite not having a lathe.)

This reminds Me of when This Old Tony did EXACTLY the same operation, just for one of the bigger gears. Seems these things love blowing gears.

Nice! I got tired of swapping the fiddly gears on my mini though and converted to an ELS (Electronic Lead Screw). It's so handy to change from roughing, threading or finishing with push of some buttons in seconds instead of several minutes to with each gear change. If you're like me and constantly need to change the gears to go from different operations consider an ELS.

informativ. Nice !

A quick and dirty trick to cut seldom used imperial threads (27TPI) on a mini lathe ist to print the required change-gear on an 3D printer. Did work fine, but i guess not for a long time. Milling gears is on my to do list. I don't have a dividing plate for my rotary table, but I am sure a 3D printed dividing plate will work fine.

Having the same setup I first added a stepper motor replacing the indexing disk to reduce monkey work rotating the handle and then replaced this horrible manual gearbox with an electronic one based on a stepper motor and a rotary encoder. Now I'm happy and can share the sources if anyone wants to repeat them.

Is it about saving money? Is it? Never for me. It's about looking at something you use and knowing that you made it.

Nice work, dividing head seems like good value. Learnt about module gears thanks. Let us know when you get to 80.

G'day! I love how your break-even point for this is 80 or so gears :-))) As usual I enjoyed what you were doing, but also your great camera work and narration. BTW I'm not a machinist but my goodness, that dividing head...

Wow you got that dividing head setup at a good price.

Nice work! :)

Subscribing straightway

great video. How did you cut the keyway in the gears bore?

Keep it up.

Great info there. Thank you. So where and how can I get that Engineering Black Book Please.?

Very good job next video metal gear machine lathe projeck

Lol! That's how it always starts! " dont buy that! I can buy the tools and make it myself for no more than double that price !"

lmao the last bit

I've cut many gears using hand ground profiled 2 flute end mills.....the gear form for the cutter was viewed using a modified slide projector to project the form of the cutter onto a wall 4 metres away against a hand drawn projection chart.

I think the real show here is making it on this lathe

You really do a great job with these machining videos. No excess talking in front of the camera like other annoying American machinist channels. No frequent Patreon links to "support my channel" and give me free money B.S... I'm so tired of that crap on those channels that I've unsubscribed from. Just the down and dirty work with excellent filming, commentary and editing. Keep up the great work.

Excellent video as usual, really hoping you were going to make the dividing head yourself, that's what is holding me back from my own gears

I've been following your channel for quite a few videos now and I really like your style. You're doing a great job. To put the quality of your parts to the next level, I highly recommend you to be even more thorough with deburring. There are good reasons for always deburring edges: 1. Safety. We all know that burrs can leave nasty scars not only to the machinist, but also to the person fixing/upgrading/cleaning things someday down the road. Or even harm customers, which professionals should by all means try to avoid. 2. Accuracy. Clamping a bolt down on a burr around the hole might hold up well initially. But on ratteling machinery or any moving device, the burr may wear quickly and the connection comes lose again and again. 3. Appearance. A small machined chamfer on all edges just look so nice and clean and transport a first hint on high quality. If you really want to put your deburring job to the test, use a cotton rag and lightly drag it over all the edges of the part. If it catches there is still room for an even smoother finish. I hope this is of some value. Thanks for sharing and all the effort you put in your videos, Artisan. Looking forward to upcoming projects

It's a crime this channel has under 100k subs.

Should check out Click Spring's videos on making tools. He goes into making your own gear cutters and how to make the tools to make those gear cutters 😁

Beautiful work!!

nice video. Now if you plan to make many gears, i recommend that convert dividing head to arduino powered stepper motor drive, it will be much easier, and less possibility for errors in dividing. Thanks for sharing...

Its not about the price or haste of result, it's the journey

how did you cut the key way in the gear?

Lol. Love your tongue in cheek comment about roi if 80 gears. Lol. All us hobby machinists try to justify the spend somehow. Lol.

Dude you are just torturing me with that hacksaw cutting that chunk of round stock😩🤣 please please buy yourself a bandsaw

Nice work not sure if you should be climb cutting those gears though. Thats kinda asking for trouble especially on such a small mill

The thing is whats the point of having the machinery if you're not going to use it. Its a bit of a learning exercise too so great job. You never know when you might need some new gears and there could be a part shortage.

Hi I am about to cut some mod 1 gear. I have some questions about gear cutting. What RPM did you use? Did you go full depth of cut? (I can see you did full depth initially.) Does climb milling cause vibration? My setup can not do conventional milling. I have a x2.7 mill and am trying to do a 63 tooth gear in aluminium. Thanks

From scratch? Perhaps next time you can show us your steel forge from where you formed your rod.

Why you cut the stocks with a hand saw? An angle grinder would do it a lot faster. But maybe there is a reason i'm missing

Wanna try that out from steel and case harden them.

When you're cutting the aluminum gear at around 10:35 are you jjst supporting the cut with the socket cap bolt in the tail stock? Surely that can't be the best?

What rapm are you using when turning the steel with the carbide tool?

Great fun video! 👍 A couple of points; Why use a 49 hole plate and do 7/49ths when you could have used a 21 hole plate and used 3/21 ? Much easier to count and going with the simplest plate is usually the best. And, gears only need an accurate tooth profile if you will be running them at high speeds and high power transmission levels. The accurate tooth profile reduces friction, heat buildup etc. For your case the gears are very low speed, very low power transmission and very infrequent use. You could have cut any dodgy "tooth shaped" cutter out of HSS and got a result that was totally acceptable. Anyway, just some thoughts, great channel by the way. 🙂

this would be so useful if i had one of these right now a lathe and those gear making cutters..i have a gear i need made for a snowblower but its discontinued..its so frustrating and annoying any place aorund here that would cut it charges at least 150 dollars just to cut the gear baseline and everythign else its like 200 bucks..at that price i can probably buy all teh equiptment and do it myself which id rather do anyway but geez..nothign seems to be reasonably priced anymore such stupid costs for things.

Is there any way to get enough precision using encoders and a proper dc motor + electronics to cut gears using just the lathe motor or is a dividing head strictly necessary?

Great video What book were you refer to? Please talk about the scamming you referred to in a previous comment reply

@artisan makes.... when are you going to build a power hacksaw? or buy a band saw?

Which cutter machine

Do you ever make spiral bevel gears?

Unless gears are not very small one or two gear cutters is enough for plastic gears. It is also possible to make cutters, any mild steel will cut plastic well. I made full set of gears for my lathe, all from scratch. Dividing plate, gear cutter, arbor for the cutter, lathe carriage attachment for drill to use it as a mill. (And MT adapter for drill chuck to be able to make arbor). That is about all you need to cut (plastic) gears. I don't see much benefit to make gears from aluminium

Where did you get the dividing head from?

Do you find the self centering 4 jaw is better than the 3, or is that just what you happen to have?

With you manually turning the gear like that isnt there a chance of a loss of position? Can it lock in place after you've moved it?

I was curious to watch your video as i have a similar video posted on my channel on Cutting Gears with a Rotary Table. I mostly decided to do it with a Rotary Table because it would help those who could justify buying a Rotary Table but not have much use for a Dividing Head. Enjoyed watching the video and wish you all the best with your channel. Peter 👍

One thing you didn't mention was the depth of the cut.

Mate, your an aussie (therefore local to me) and your constant use of a hacksaw kills me. Can I send you a cheapy angle grinder?

Great video. Have you tried to make steel gears?

Can someone please describe how the slot (keyway?) was cut into the inside of the gear?

why you need to spray water ?

I thought HSS cutters should be sharper than the carbide ones? I wonder if you messed up your relief angles when filling the business end.