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Animating gear and level motion

DC Kelley

New member
Newbie question.

I have a need to animate some gears meshed in motion moving some levers (a bit of clock works). I don't need to precisely model the tooth shapes, and presumed I could model the rotation by mating the pitch circles of each gear. I would like to do this with a parametric model I could re-use for each gear assembly. I am unsure how to model the level, where (typically) a protruding pin on one gear moves it and releases another gear to move.

Two questions.

Is SolidWorks the right tool to be using in the first place to do this? I wanted to be able to dump the final gears design into drafted parts for construction when done, so I have avoided the "purely visual" animation alternatives. Later I hope to do some spring modeling in COMOS with this if it works.

In general terms, how can I model and mate the lever part (multiple arms on a common pivot) of this to release another part?

Many thanks for any guidance, DCK
 

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