After a little guidance please

UGMENTALCASE

Hi all,

I have a small gear which I am 3D printing, and would like to see what sort of force the tips would take before they snap. This will be rotating but I think for the purpose of this test just needs fixing around the central hole, and a force adding to one of the tips? Would you agree? I've not got into figuring out not modelling all the part yet, so I appreciate I need to make the file smaller.

Thanks in advance

Cheers

Victor

I agree about fixing the shaft unless it's spinning so fast that dynamic effects are important.

The worst case force is at the tip? I guess deformations are going to be large before it breaks and that perhaps the tip bends over, distributing the force over a larger area and where the tooth is thicker. So it might be more accurate to do a nonlinear analysis with contact and the mating gear if you want to squeeze more strength out of it.

Is friction important? I imagine that tooth shape would have sliding at the point where force is applied, which would cause a friction force. In that case, perhaps either hand-calc the friction and include it into the load or model the mating gear and use friction contact.

UGMENTALCASE

Cheers Victor, it spins pretty quick but not worth worrying about.
As for the tip, I wanted to see how much force the tip would take. As it's the thinnest bit, that takes the initial push from the mating gear.
I see what you're saying about the friction, maybe I'll look into that, but for now basically just want to see when I'm likely to lose the end :-)