Inspired by a question about cams the other week, I've made a simple tool which can be used for simulating a range of different types of gears, cogs, cams, drives...

Hopefully this will enable some new ways of playing with mechanical systems.

Some ideas for the kinds of things it might be used to simulate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkQ2pXkYjRM

http://www.robives.com/mechs

http://www.mekanizmalar.com/

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rapidproto/mechanisms/examples.html

Unlike the rest of Kangaroo, this component works with specifically 2D interactions. All input curves should be in the XY plane. The dependencies are also strictly 1-directional - the driver gear affects the follower, but not vice-versa. It is also designed to work with closed curves - some open curves may work, but the results could be unpredictable.

The inputs are:

Driver - One or more driver curves

Follower - The gear affected by the driver

Axle - The point about which the follower gear will rotate. Moving this point during simulation will also move the Follower gear, as shown in the video (the new grasshopper gumball comes in handy here)

Compound - allows you to optionally attach another curve which will move and translate along with the Follower curve, but which does not itself interact directly with the Driver (can be used for building compound gear trains)

Pull - If this boolean toggle is set to true, the Follower curve will try and always stay in contact with the Driver, useful if you are simulating cams

Reset - Sets the rotation of the Follower back to its original value

GearToy.gha

(edit 15/12/13 - This component is now included as part of the latest release of Kangaroo)

The component will show up as part of Kangaroo under the utilities tab (and in time I intend to integrate this 2D curve interaction with the main solver, to allow multidirectional dependencies)

Example files:

Gear_examples.zip