Jeff Schoner
CS285 Final Project Proposal
April 7, 2002

I plan to study the design, fabrication and installation of novel
non-circular gears.  This broad class "non-circular gears" refers more
specifically to elliptical and so-called "kidney-shaped" gears.

The task of design breaks down into three key parts:  the geometry of
this class of gears, the geometry and properties of the teeth, and 
the relation of both of the aforementioned to standard theories and
descriptions of gears, such as those that can be found in a standard
mechanical engineering text.

Several (between five and ten) gears will be fabricated to
demonstrate the variety of these kind of gears.  To
accomplish this step, the FDM machine will be used.  The parts will be
designed in the SLIDE environment for ease of producing the needed STL
files.  A custom piece of software may be used, should my frustration
with SLIDE become unbearable. 

The final step of this project will be to perform the installation of
the gears.  The fabricated gears will be placed in an open-topped box
(probably made from wood) in an interesting arrangement.  The
intention here is that a person will not only be able to observe, but
also to interact with the installation.  Handles, axles, and other
parts necessary to ease of rotation, will be added, either by
modifying the design of the gears or by adding physical items not
made on the FDM machine (ie, nails and plastic rings). 

Milestone Schedule:

by week 12:  The various types of gears that are reasonable to design
will be determined.  Also the mathematical descriptions of them and
which parameters are to be variable will be known.

by week 13:  Mathematical representation of the teeth, more
specifically how they are to surround the gears will be known.

by week 14:  Generate software tools (or SLIDE description) of the
gears with their teeth, that can produce input for the FDM machine.

by week 15:  Demonstrate some actual fabricated gears, showing how they
will work together using my hands.

by week 16:  Put together final installation with all the gears and
other parts.