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A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
One of the many rabbit holes I got pulled into over the years is the design of involute gears; I’ve written about this in depth elsewhere, but an accessible intro might save some readers a lot of time. The correct solution has a couple of remarkable properties: properly-designed gears roll with little friction or vibration, turn at a constant speed, and transfer torque without any discontinuities or snags. If we want to transfer linear motion from one such bar to another while still maintaining the ability to separate the components down the line, the most obvious solution is to cut an array of symmetric, rectangular slots into the edge of each rack:
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