Yes, I’m a moron who doesn’t use Illustrator much anymore.
There have been several times where I needed a simple gear or series of gears for something and it was always a pain in the ass. It was never a massive part of the project, just a small additional element, meaning I never really put any time into figuring out how to do it. I usually would find a free vector gear, or autotrace a jpg and clean it up. One time I even used to pen to make one with an image template.
I finally put a few (very few) minutes of thought on it and came up with this approach, which works just fine for what I’ve needed. After I take it into Cinema4D or something similar, it can get super funky, but this is where I need it for now, and a lot faster than it used to take me.
The real learning lesson? Take a few minutes to figure out how to do things right in the beginning and you will save a ton of time in the long run.