3D Printed Gears & Mechanisms

This is where printing stops competing with the shelf and starts doing something a shelf cannot. A herringbone gear is expensive to cut and trivial to print. A hinge can come off the bed already moving, because the clearance is designed in rather than assembled. A worm drive or an obsolete sprocket that nothing sells any more is a file, not a lead time. The gears here use a real involute tooth profile at a stated module — the curve that holds a constant ratio as the teeth pass, rather than a gear-shaped part that binds — so they mesh with each other and with anything else made to the same standard. Print in PETG or nylon for anything that actually turns under load; PLA is fine to prove a ratio or sit on a desk. Read the honest limits before you commit: printed teeth creep under sustained torque, soften with the heat their own friction generates, and are the wrong answer where cut steel belongs.

17 example designs · Free CC0 files to download · Order any of them printed, or send your own