I came across this model of a "melted" or "wilting" gear...  (Think Dali's
clocks.)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2872162
http://forum.openscad.org/file/t1632/a22b1cd568ea8d3a6547ed46a6a10119_preview_featured.jpg

Can anyone think of a good way to recreate this in OpenSCAD?

Let's assume you are completely modeling in OpenSCAD so could re-write the
code for the gear generation.

Objective is to curve a flat object around a "pipe" of a certain diameter.

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OpenSCAD doesn't have native support for plastic transformations or for
userland geometry.  I would recommend using something else.

If you're really determined, it's possible to write a geometry engine within
OPENScad, and then implement plastic transforms by subdividing triangles,
but it's a bunch of work and OPENScad isn't well-suited to a task like that.

This is "extruded" and "bent" in OpenSCAD, but I had to scrape the geometry
for the letters from postscript.

http://forum.openscad.org/file/t2140/cylindertext.stl

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I suppose it's a somewhat advanced effort, but I don't think it would be
particularly hard to write a "bent_sweep" module that would take a polygon
expressed as a series of point coordinates and a second "destination"
polygon also as a series of points.  You could project the first polygon
onto the second one and then build it up to the desired thickness (in the
normal direction), constructing the vertices and faces of the necessary
polyhedron.

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Here's my quick and dirty code based on  my library
https://github.com/JustinSDK/dotSCAD  .

include <shape_starburst.scad>;
include <bend_extrude.scad>;

gear_r = 30;
thickness = 2;
angle = 75;
frags = 24;

module gear() {
rotate(1) difference() {
polygon(shape_starburst(gear_r, 25, 24));
circle(5);
for(i = [0:5]) {
rotate(60 * i) translate([15, 0, 0]) circle(5);
}
}
}

rotate([0, -angle / frags, 0])
translate([gear_r / frags / 2, -gear_r, gear_r * 180 / (angle *
3.14159)])
rotate([90, 0, 0])
bend_extrude([gear_r, gear_r * 2], thickness, angle, frags)
translate([0, gear_r, 0]) gear();

linear_extrude(thickness)
intersection() {
translate([-gear_r / 2, 0, 0])
gear();
}

bend_extrude is not documented currently, however, it's already in the
repository.

  <http://forum.openscad.org/file/t1825/melting_gear.jpg>        

square([gear_r, gear_r * 2], center = true);

http://openhome.cc

Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/

Here's my quick and dirty code based on  my library
https://github.com/JustinSDK/dotSCAD  .

include <shape_starburst.scad>;
include <bend_extrude.scad>;

gear_r = 30;
thickness = 2;
angle = 75;
frags = 24;

module gear() {
rotate(1) difference() {
polygon(shape_starburst(gear_r, 25, 24));
circle(5);
for(i = [0:5]) {
rotate(60 * i) translate([15, 0, 0]) circle(5);
}
}
}

rotate([0, -angle / frags, 0])
translate([gear_r / frags / 2, -gear_r, gear_r * 180 / (angle *
3.14159)])
rotate([90, 0, 0])
bend_extrude([gear_r, gear_r * 2], thickness, angle, frags)
translate([0, gear_r, 0]) gear();

linear_extrude(thickness)
intersection() {
translate([-gear_r / 2, 0, 0])
square([gear_r, gear_r * 2], center = true);
gear();
}

bend_extrude is not documented currently, however, it's already in the
repository.

http://forum.openscad.org/file/t1825/melting_gear2.jpg

http://openhome.cc

Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/