In this assignment we made a 2D drawing of a machine taken from 507 Mechanical Movements in order to accurately represent this machine and its component parts geometrically and dimensionally. I chose part number 216, a combination of three parts. This consisted of two external gears which were on the inside of the part, and one external gear that enveloped the whole part.

My general strategy in attacking this drawing consisted of the use of multiple layers. I kept the original linearly traced drawing on one layer, built the part on another layer, and left any spare parts that I might want to use later on a third layer. This way, I could continuously match up the new drawing with the old whenever I finished a step.

I began by making a series of concentric circles to make the outer gear. Then I made use of the star tool to make my gear.

I applied two more concentric circles and  the union/intersect tools to create the body of the first inner gear.

From here it got trickier. I filled in the gear with two more circles, copied it to the third layer so I could use the part later, but still had to find a way to get rid of an entire side of gear teeth. I ended up using a line segment and the divide function to split them. I then drew a half circle and united the two parts back together to make the full gear. After copying the other gear, it was close to finished.

The next part took a long time. I had to backtrack and re-make the outer gear with teeth by using the star tool and concentric circles again. In order to get the teeth off of the bottom half of the gear, I created another semicircle, filled both of them, and united the two. This deleted the unnecessary teeth, leaving me with just teeth on the top half.

While not terribly difficult, I discovered during this project that Solidworks knowledge hardly translates to Illustrator. I also learned that making gears can be difficult, and making half-gears even more so.

You can download my Illustrator file here: HW2 engi210-1t0hddb