For my gears, I wanted to have two gears, in which one is connected to the motor and the other gear is connected to the wooden row. In particular, since I wanted the mechanism to move slower than the 60 rpm motor that we were given, I made the motor small for the motor and larger for the rod. Moreover, when I rough design the part, I add a cylindrical addition in order for a set screw to secure the gear tightly.
In terms of the ratio between the motor and rod gears, I ended up having a small gear with 8 teeth and the large gear with 12 teeth. Thus, I ended up with 1:1.5 gear ratio, thus slowing the mechanism down.
I then CAD the gear (with the aid of the gear plug-in in Fusion 360) to make the two gears with a place for a set screw. Firstly, I made the gear half an inch and then added a half-inch cylinder underneath the gear. I then created a hole, of .43mm for the motor gear and 13.15mm for the rod gear. While printing the piece myself, I made sure to up the infill (70%) in order for the set screw to sit in right. Once printed, I set screwed the small gear into the motor (with the much-appreciated help of Alyssa) and super-glued the large gear into place.
It took many iterations to come up with the design above. My first iteration had over 28+ teeth, which I soon realized after printing that the high teeth count results in the teeth being easily caught together and thus cannot move as freely. Thus, I sized the number of teeth down. Also, I made the diameters of the gears a bit too big (5 inches) or too small (.5 inches), which I soon realized such sizing is not ideal for the scale of the project. I CAD over 10 gears and ended up printing 8 of them.
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