John,
I tried watching a few of that chaps you tube offerings, but his consistent beating of gums rather than showing anything stopped me from watching them all the way thru. All the articles he did could most probably be condensed into a quarter of the time, if only he could stop using that damned mouth of his and get on with the job in hand.
This DVD I watched however was full of interesting stuff. I am not on about making the cutters, as I know all his tooth forms are a load of crap, and he states that they are not the correct form, but they work for what he is doing. My interest lay in the way he used the hobs, and that to me was an eye opener. Also, I found the video quality was more than acceptable on a 42" plasma.
If you remember, a while ago I was looking to buy a set of gear cutting hobs, and everyone in the know who replied said that expensive machinery was required to use them.
http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=511.0In this DVD, the chappie shows how he got around the problem of the complicated and expensive machinery, and achieved very satisfactory results, and I am sure that if I used the correct form of hobs, I could produce correct gears as well, using his techniques.
But to get back to a point that has been raised about tooth forms.
If you are making a set of gears to go onto a small engine or a small workshop tool, does it really matter if the gear forms aren't correct? Surely if they have the right number of teeth and they run together well, does it matter if they are DP20 or MOD1.25? Only if you are trying to match existing setups are perfect tooth forms required, say if you wanted to make a few extra change gears. That is the reason I wanted to use hobs, one hob will cut all gears of the same pitch.
If this is the case, and you are just after making a cheap set of gears for small engines or home shop projects, then I would still recommend this DVD.
There is a large difference in what we need to do in the shop for our own use, and what is required for industrial use, or to satisfy the purists who require everything to be perfect and just so.
If there is anyone local who wants to watch it, I am sure I can arrange a viewing time for you, and then you can make up your own mind if it is for you or not. I won't even charge for the popcorn and coffee.
John