On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: Everybody Mention of the Alps plotter reminds me that we've had various discussions about all the plotter mechs with broken gears but we've never worked out the details on fabricating replacement gears. I've learned a lot about fabrication over the past couple of years, so I wanted to take another stab at the discussion to fill in the parts I don't (yet) understand... So I was looking at this gear generator... http://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html ... thinking that you can't fabricate a good replacement until you have the data on what you are replacing. I'd like to try to make either a flat (DXF) design file or a 3D (STL) design file of a gear replacement candidate. It's possible that with so few leaves (teeth) and such a small size (1/8" / 3mm across the face, 1/20" / 1.27mm shaft) that there will be fiddling for undercut, etc., but I wanted to at least make *something* that could be tried for good fit. So that web-based tool can make a bitmap image of a gear given the right data, but my own 2D CAD skills aren't honed enough to draft up a DXF of a gear. Is there anyone on the list here who is good with 2D CAD and has time to make an image of a gear? I'm fine with turning that into 3D and seeing how things would all turn out. I still have several broken plotters and would like to get them working again. Cheers, -ethan