In his Handbook of Gear Design (Ref.1), Dudley states (or understates): "The best gear people around the world are now coming to realize that metallurgical quality is just as important as geometric quality." Geometric accuracy without metallurgical integrity in any highly stressed gear or shaft would only result in wasted effort for all concerned - the gear designer, the manufacturer, and the customer - as the component's life cycle would be prematurely cut short. A carburized automotive gear or shaft with the wrong surface hardness, case depth or core hardness may not even complete its basic warranty period before failing totally at considerable expense and loss of prestige for the producer and the customer. The unexpected early failure of a large industrial gear or shaft in a coal mine or mill could result in lost production and income while the machine is down since replacement components may not be readily available. Fortunately, this scenario is not common. Most reputable gear and shaft manufacturers around the world would never neglect the metallurgical quality of their products.

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.

After shaping or hobbing, the tooth flanks must be either chamfered or duburred. Here it is paramount that the secondary burr produced will not be formed into the flank, but to the face of the gear, because during hardening, the secondary burr will straighten up and, due to its extreme hardness, will lead to excessive tool wear.

Profitable hard machining of tooth flanks in mass production has now become possible thanks to a number of newly developed production methods. As used so far, the advantages of hard machining over green shaving or rolling are the elaborately modified tooth flanks are produced with a scatter of close manufacturing tolerances. Apart from an increase of load capacity, the chief aim is to solve the complex problem of reducing the noise generation by load-conditioned kinematic modifications of the tooth mesh. In Part II, we shall deal with operating sequences and machining results and with gear noise problems.

Hobbing is a continuous gear generation process widely used in the industry for high or low volume production of external cylindrical gears. Depending on the tooth size, gears and splines are hobbed in a single pass or in a two-pass cycle consisting of a roughing cut followed by a finishing cut. State-of-the-art hobbing machines have the capability to vary cutting parameters between first and second cut so that a different formula is used to calculate cycle times for single-cut and double-cut hobbing.

When specifying a complete gear design, the novice designer is confronted with an overwhelming and frequently confusing group of options which must be specified. This array of specifications range from the rather vague to the very specific.