How long can wooden gears last?
For my tests, I wanted a quiet low-speed
motor, so I took this silly fan motor
made all the wires come out the back
and then added this wooden flange on the front
so I could put a shaft in there and power some gears.
I'm gonna make one of my gears out of Baltic Birch
which is what I always use and is probably the best material
and the other out of MDF
which a lot of people have asked me about.
So, we'll find out how that does.
My bandsaw blades has gotten a little bit dull, so it
cuts very slowly, but for cutting gears
that's actually, kind of, convenient.
I'm using some roller skate ball bearings
and these fit into these blocks here
which will hold the whole thing together.
Now I need some kind of load on this shaft
just to make sure these gears are actually transmitting
power, and for that I'm gonna
spin this board in the air
and that fits on here fairly tight,
but just to make sure that it's not gonna slip,
I'm gonna squish it together with a little clamp.
I think that load slows down the motor a little bit
too much, so I'll just shorten that board
for a bit less area resistance.
Now, anytime gears are under load, it would make sense
to lubricate them, even wooden ones,
so I'm using this salvo finish to grease them up.
I also switched to AC power, so I wouldn't overheat
my power supply. Just a bit of grease on 'em
makes 'em run much quieter.
OK, now I just need to run the gears
until something wears out.
After ten minutes of running, straight,
I don't really see any noticible signs or wear
so, this test might last a while.
Half an hour in, I still don't see any wear,
but I also noticed this clamp wasn't tight enough,
so the shaft was slipping here and it got hot.
So, on with the test.
So, after an hour
you can definately see which side of the tooth
on here is getting the wear, at least on the MDF here.
On the plywood gear, not so much.
So, these gears now have been running
six hours straight, and
looking at them, I just can't really
see any obvious signs of wear.
So, I'm pretty sure these would run for a week straight
before there'd be any sort of problem.
And, sometimes ask how long the gears on my
screw advance box joint jig will last,
well, I'm pretty sure now, they'll last a very long time.
Now, I just need to think of some sort of
woodworking machine that uses wooden gears
for power transmission.
Well, I just ran it for another 24 hours straight
and the gears still look fine.
I'm sure glad I didn't try to use a hand-drill to power this.