Non-uniform gear wear changes gear topology and affects the noise performance of a hypoid gear set. The
aggregate results under certain vehicle driving conditions could potentially result in unacceptable vehicle noise performance in a short period of time. This paper presents the effects of gear surface parameters on gear wear and the measurement/testing methods used to quantify the flank wear in laboratory tests.
Guidelines are insurance against mistakes in the often detailed work of gear manufacturing. Gear engineers, after all, can't know all the steps for all the processes used in their factories.
Flexibility and productivity are the keywords in today’s grinding operations. Machines are becoming
more flexible as manufacturers look
for ways to produce more parts at a
lower cost. What used to take two
machines or more now takes just one.
The benefits of ground gears are well known. They create less noise, transmit more power and have longer lives than non-ground gears. But grinding has always been thought of as an expensive process, one that was necessary only for aerospace or other high-tech gear manufacturing.
When hardened steel components are ground, there is always the possibility of damage to the steel in the form of residual stress or microstructural changes. Methods for detecting this sort of damage have always had one or more drawbacks, such as cost, time, complexity, subjectivity, or the use of hazardous chemicals.
The goal of gear drive design is to transit power and motion with constant angular velocity. Current trends in gear drive design require greater load carrying capacity and increased service life in smaller, quieter, more efficient gearboxes. Generally, these goals are met by specifying more accurate gears. This, combined with the availability of user-friendly CNC gear grinding equipment, has increased the use of ground gears.
The grinding of gears with dish wheels (Maad type grinding machines) is widely viewed as the most precise method of gear grinding because of the very short and simple kinematic links between the gear and the tool, and also because the cutting edges of the wheels represent planar surfaces. However, in this grinding method, depending on the parameters of the gears and one of the adjustments (such as the number of teeth encompassed by the grinding wheels), so-called overtravel at the tip or at the root of the teeth being ground generally occurs. When this happens, machining with only one wheel takes place. As a result, the profile error and the length of the generating path increases while productivity decreases.
An analysis of possibilities for the selection of tool geometry parameters was made in order to reduce tooth profile errors during the grinding of gears by different methods. The selection of parameters was based on the analysis of he grid diagram of a gear and a rack. Some formulas and graphs are presented for the selection of the pressure angle, module and addendum of the rack-tool. The results from the grinding experimental gears confirm the theoretical analysis.