Appreciation and gears

Sebastianmaklary

Hi Guys and gals

I really appreciate this software and how it enables the analysis of complicated parts at a low cost level so this post is me putting something online that may fill the forum with something else than the issues people have with it. I'll show something I think is cool.

Here's what I'm working on at the moment: I'm simulating the meshing of two spiral bevel gears in a racecar gearbox and I'm using the interpretation of the results to edit the design to reduce stresses, move the contact pattern about and to assess the deflections so I can specify usable tolerances.




I have already designed most of the other parts of our gearbox using Mecway to analyze the gears and achieving very significant stress reductions by analyzing many different design parameters. These bevel gears are orders of magnitude more difficult to design because of how the tooth twists but now that I have design proposals, I'm in love with how easily I can test the design before we start the manufacturing.

My methodology is to draw something in Solidworks, import a STEP file into Mecway, mesh it and apply loads and boundary conditions before running the simulation using Calculix in Mecway.

I work at a company where the owner expects me to be able to design and calculate anything but is reluctant to invest in the expensive commercial software that I know that the larger companies use so while Mecway is not going to outcompete ANSYS on functionality, I'm at awe at how much value for money this software provides. It is just great that I'm able to design pretty complicated products just using what I consider basic engineering tools such as a CAD program, matlab and microsoft word when I also have Mecway to analyze the designs.