Designing gears, cogs, sprockets in illustrator for laser cutting

I really enjoy building mechanical movements, and I am terrible at it. It is really difficult to build things that move without relying on expensive pre-built mechanisms. Thus I am always looking for cheap ways to design and build cogs, gears, and sprockets.

Thank you for voting / Ponoko test fit pieces!

First – a big thank you to everyone who voted for me in the sparkfun / ponoko / Geekdad contest – I won! From here on out I will be documenting my process as I go from rough prototype to finished laser cut beer vending machine! There will be an upcoming longer piece on how …

Treatise on living and loving lasers

In case you haven’t caught on yet. I love projects, and I am always starting a new one in order to abandon an old one. Recently I have become fascinated by the DIY laser movement propagated by the fine people over at laserpointerforums.com. My interest was piqued initially by “lamedust” who posted an instructable here …