Cutting to scanned images

[MervynMitchell (Dr Mervyn Mitchell)]

This probably reveals the depths of my ignorance (once again), but I am attempting to cut wooden clock gears from printed images. The method I’m using is cumbersome and I’m wondering whether there is a simpler technique.

I’m scanning the gear outline in JPEG format, using Photoshop to erase all extraneous print and other stuff, leaving just the outline, then saving as PNG. I then use an online converter to change PNG to SVG, which I import into Carbide create and scale to the size required. This is a bit tedious and has the disadvantage that the SVG file contains two sets of lines marking the outer and inner boundaries of the original printed lines. Depending on which I delete, my gears are either a tad too big or too small. Any suggestions as to a better way to proceed (if there is one) would be received with gratitude and admiration!

[fenrus (Arjan van de Ven)]

Inkscape is your friend here… it can do the conversion directly and has worked well for me often

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

If you have Photoshop, why not use it to convert a selection to a path, then export those paths to Adobe Illustrator where you can clean them up and export as an SVG?

Or, better still, place the cleaned up scan in Adobe Illustrator and do a centerline trace there (which will avoid the issue of tracing both outside and inside).

Alternately, why not just source the wooden clock plans in electronic format?

https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Online_resources#Clocks_and_Gears

or design your own?

https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/CAD#Clocks

[mikep]

A better way is to actually use a gear generator app to match up to what you see in use in the clock - I really like this one: https://geargenerator.com/#200,200,100,6,1,3,0,4,1,8,2,4,27,-90,0,0,0,0,0,0,16,4,4,27,-60,0,0,0,0,1,1,12,1,12,20,-60,0,0,0,0,2,0,60,5,12,20,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,3,-515

You can download svg, dxf. It “only” generates involute spur gears, but that’s generally what you would want (worm and helical gears are a totally different kettle of fish)