PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sobolak, Mariusz
AU  - Jagiełowicz, Patrycja Ewa
TI  - Rapid Prototyping Techniques for Prototyping and Research of Polymer Gear Transmissions
DP  - 2012 Oct 31
TA  - Acta Mechanica Slovaca
PG  - 68--73
VI  - 16
IP  - 3
IS  - 13352393
AB  - The article presents different fields of usage of Rapid Prototyping techniques in production and research of functional prototypes of polymer gears for electromechanical industry. Such Rapid Prototyping techniques as stereolithography and vacuum casting are used for preparing of functional prototypes of gears. The method of receiving of accurate gears made of differ plastics is shown. The gears are made by duplication of the stereolithographic model in the silicon matrices. The properties of stereolithographic resin are used in order to photo-elastic research - the determination of distribution of stresses in the gears of loaded transmission. The deformations of teeth of loaded transmission are frozen using vacuum casting. Beside the deformations, the tooth contact on the flank surfaces of teeth is obtained. The tooth contact can be also directly observed when the test gears are made of transparent plastic. The usefulness of Rapid Prototyping for production of accuracy gears and the usefulness of vacuum casting for freezing deformation and observation of tooth contact is shown in the conducted research. The presented solutions can be applied to the plastic gears. The presented possibilities of production and research of polymer gears can find a wide application in the electromechanical industry, that produced gears for drives of different types of devices, for example in the household equipments, in the motorization. The novelty is the usage of vacuum casting for freezing deformations of teeth in the static load transmission. The method allows preliminary verification of correctness of construction of gears basis of the received tooth contact - its size and location on the tooth flank.