I was interested in gears and mechanics around gears and wanted visuals to better understand how they worked. I used AutoCAD to design simple gears with circular teeth.  I calculated the ratios to make planetary gears. I considered the number of teeth, the diameter of the teeth, and the circumference of the gear to make these. I laser cut the pieces and created a  working model. The gears did not turn smoothly though. This may have been due to the material creating friction.

For my next gear visual, I used Solidworks to design a gearbox demonstrating how gear ratios worked. I wanted to learn how to design gears, so I did not use the gears in the Solidworks library. I used a Youtube tutorial to learn about how the pitch, addendum, dedendum, module, and other measurements/values related to make different sized spur gears that fit together. Then, I 3D printed the gears and laser cut the stand to bring the model to life.  These gears fit together well and spun smoothly likely due to the plastic material and the improved design.