From the Duty to the Drawing
Designing a gear means making a long chain of decisions. How much power? Which gears? What steel, and how accurate? How big is the shaft, and how does torque get onto it? What bearings and what oil? A standard governs each decision. The standards come from several families: ISO, AGMA, ASME, SAE and ASTM. They do not always agree on names or numbers.
This guide follows the order a gear designer actually works in. Each step shows four things: the decisions to make, the standards that govern them, the KasperCalc tools that help, and what ends up on the drawing. A checklist at the end shows whether every decision has a place on the drawing.
Read first. This guide is under construction, and the first version is a framework.
- It points to standards, it does not replace them. The standards are copyrighted and their tables are not reproduced here. Open the standard for the values you put on a drawing.
- Check the edition. Every standard is marked “check edition”. Editions change, and some are withdrawn or replaced by another family’s document.
- Specific recommendations are not here yet. Minimum shaft sizes, standard shaft tolerances, keyway and spline sizes, lubricant grades and bearings will arrive as calculators. Until then those steps list the governing standards and the decisions.
- Tools marked “coming soon” do not exist yet. They will link here when they do.
- Cylindrical gears first. The workflow covers spur and helical gears. Bevel, worm and planetary gearing have their own standards and are not yet covered.
- It is a design aid, not a design review. A qualified engineer should check safety-critical gearing.