This is a plugin for Manim that enables you to draw realistic looking gears and mechanisms. Mostly based on these tec-science pages: https://www.tec-science.com/mechanical-power-transmission/involute-gear/geometry-of-involute-gears/
Currently supported Involute gear features:
- Basic spur gears
- Inside ring-gears
- Basic rack
- Undercutting (gears with fewer than 17 teeth)
- Profile shifted gears
- Meshing calculation with distance variation
Planned further development:
- Cycloid gears, cycloid rack
manim-gearbox is a package on pypi, and can be directly installed using pip:
pip install manim-gearbox
Note: manim-gearbox uses, and depends on SciPy and Manim.
Make sure include these two imports at the top of the .py file
from manim import *
from manim_gearbox import *Add Gear objects, use mesh_to() method to position 2 gears into meshing. I tend to use 'fill_opacity=1' and 'stroke_opacity=0' options because the stroke increases the gear size by a couple pixels, and gives the feeling of interference.
class gear_example(Scene):
def construct(self):
# small gear
gear1=Gear(15, stroke_opacity=0, fill_color=WHITE,fill_opacity=1)
# larger gear
gear2=Gear(25, stroke_opacity=0, fill_color=RED, fill_opacity=1)
# shifting gear1 away from center
gear1.shift(-gear1.rp * 1.5 * RIGHT)
# position gear2 next to gear1 so that they mesh together
gear2.mesh_to(gear1)
self.add(gear1, gear2)
self.play(Rotate(gear1, gear1.pitch_angle, rate_func=linear),
Rotate(gear2, - gear2.pitch_angle, rate_func=linear),
run_time=4)
class gear_example_inner(Scene):
def construct(self):
# smaller gear
gear1 = Gear(12, module=1, profile_shift=0.3, stroke_opacity=0, fill_color=WHITE,fill_opacity=1)
# larger gear with inner teeth
gear2 = Gear(36, module=1, inner_teeth=True, profile_shift=0.1, stroke_opacity=0, fill_color=RED, fill_opacity=1)
gear1.shift(gear1.rp * UP)
gear2.shift(gear2.rp * UP)
# mesh with 0.15*module larger distance than default
# bias param is used to define left or right tooth flank shall engage if there is offset and play
gear2.mesh_to(gear1,offset=0.15,bias=False)
self.add(gear1)
self.add(gear2)
self.play(Rotate(gear1, gear1.pitch_angle, rate_func=linear),
Rotate(gear2, gear2.pitch_angle, rate_func=linear),
run_time=10)