Process of designing and laser cutting a rack and pinion mechanism

Creating the Pinion Gear:

• Use the Fusion spur gear add-in (Utilities -> Add-Ins -> Scripts and Add-Ins -> Spur Gear) with your desired dimensions to create your pinion gear

 

Creating the Rack:

• Create the profile of the rack teeth using the geometry of the pinion gear. (Here is a good YouTube video detailing how)

• Extrude the tooth profile then create a linear pattern with the desired number of rack teeth

• Create a base for the teeth to hold them all together with a channel through it for mounting so the rack can slide when the pinion is turned

 

Creating a board to hold the rack and pinion:

• Measure the distance between the center hole of the pinion gear and the top of the channel in the rack

• Create a box the size of your backing and position a hole to pin the pinion into and 2 holes to pin the rack to

*I scaled my rack and pinion to half size which is why the distance between the top and bottom holes is half the distance measured previously

 

Laser-cutting:

• Export all of your sketches as dxf files (You will likely need to create a new sketch and project the rack geometry onto it for a clean dxf file)
• Import the dxf files to Ruby and make any needed adjustments before queueing them
• Cut out files and assembly the final mechanism