What Are Wild Gears?

Wild Gears are the end result of a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 that set out to make a newer, better, spirograph like product.  Each gear set is made from one solid sheet of 3 mm (~1/8 inch) acrylic that is laser cut to produce gears and rings.

How Do I Use Them?

All the gears have a variety of pen holes to choose from.  Put the gear inside a ring on a piece of paper, put a pen through the hole and start rolling the gear around in the ring.  It will make a cool design.  Words don't do a very good job of conveying the idea so please accept this supplementary video.

What Makes Wild Gears So Special?

There are many things that set Wild Gears apart from all other gear based drawing products.

1. They are made from clear acrylic.  This makes it easier to use the gears because you can see through the gears and have a easier idea of how the design is progressing and when it is done.
2. They are laser cut.  This has two large benefits.  Laser cutting provides much higher precision gears which means that they work better, smoother, and more accurately.  It is important that the pen comes back to where it started rather than close to where it started to make a flawless design.  Less precise gears have enough play that it can be hard to return to the same location at the start and end of a design.  Laser cutting all the pieces from a single sheet of acrylic has the added benefit of making a ring for every gear that is cut.  This means that a gear set that has 14 gears also has 14 rings which leads to a vast increase in possible designs over other products that usually only provide a few rings to so with the gears.
3. Parallel lines.  These gear sets have a new innovation that makes it possible to make parallel designs, something that had never been done before by any other product.  Again, this is hard to describe so please check out this quick video.

 4.   Strange Shapes.  The gear sets include gears that are not circles.  This includes squares, triangles, pentagons, and stranger shapes.  These gears work with all the circular gears and make wonderfully unusual designs.  Most gear sets include at least two non-cicular gears.  The exceptions are the Strange Shapes gear set which is 100% non-circular gears and the encyclopedic gear set which does not include any.

Some examples of odd shaped gears including triangles, squares, pentagons, and odder shapes

Where Can I Buy A Gear Set?

Here at the Ponoko Web store
or
Here at the shop on this webpage.

What Else Can I Do With a Gear Set?

There are so many cool ways to use the gears including, but not limited to:

Ring-Gear-Ring-Gear systems

Multi-Gear Systems

Compound Designs