Apple Gears

thingiverse

My mom is a first grade school teacher and among other prints that I am making for her classroom, I wanted to create a nice 3D printed apple that she can display on her desk. This was my first stint with Openscad. Being much more familiar with Solidworks, NX, PROE and the like this was quite the new experience and was a fun project to dip my toes into tweaking bits here and there. . Many thanks to whpthomas for his PLA gear kit.http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:130890 Also while playing with OpenScad and this project, emmett'shttp://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12208/#files , specifically the heartgears.scad file and GregFrost's http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3575, were both quite helpful. ***Due to the requirement to have an .stl file uploaded instead of just zipped file, I uploaded my original apple stl as well as the stem. NOTE that the apple is oriented at an odd angle as that was the angle I wanted whpthomas's script to slice the apple up into gears. Instructions Attached is my original apple file. The zip contains all 8 gears, the inner block, pins, and the stem again. I printed this with Makerware's standard settings. Rep 2 PLA .2mm thickness 10% infill 230 F 2 shells. As for assembly. It's a tad tricky, but by using the couple of unique features on the surface of the apple, (bottom point, stem hole, etc) and feeling to make sure that the surfaces of the gears mating edges transition smoothly from one to another helped me put it together. I super glued the stem into the stem slot. It was certainly a 3D puzzle as well....which also made it kind of fun :)