First Orbit

I was able to work on this project some this weekend, and got my first gearing completed - that of the Moon revolving around the Earth.  It looks reasonably accurate, but I note I still need to add orbit inclination and axial tilt for the Moon, and also I need to represent the Tidal Locking of the Moon.  This will add a little more gearing on the end of the Earth orrery arm.  When I complete this and am satified with my results, I'll post a short video.

I know it sounds trivial to have a single orbit represented, but it was a significant step for me to get some gearing down, attach it to an arm, and make sure all the gears were connected and wired correctly.  3DS Max is very finicky with odd angles and mixed rotation speeds, and it took some time to get all the parent/child relationships correct.  Also, I managed to get the Earth's clouds to spin at a different rate than the surface, for added realism.  I created all the spur gears, bevel gears and helical gears from scratch, and got them all to rotate at the right speeds/angles.  Now, I'm just double checking my math to make sure all the orbits will be right in the end.  My gearing table has all the orbits accurate to within 0.06%, or less than a minute over the course of a year.