Strength analysis of fiber reinforced polymeric gears made by additive manufacturing

Polymeric gears have interesting properties such as lightweight, cheapness, but they have a great point of weakness consisting in the poor mechanical properties of polymers respect to metals. Polymeric gears can be also easily produced by additive manufacturing technique. The last developments of polymer 3D printers, allow to add fibers to locally reinforce the component to be produced. In this work this kind of production method has been used to manufacture a fiber reinforced gear, to keep the lightness of the polymer, but increasing its mechanical strength. In particular, the reinforcement fiber has been added on the external shape of the teeth, where the bending stress is higher.