Gear shaving is a free-cutting gear finishing operation which removes small amounts of metal from the working surfaces of the gear teeth. Its purpose is to correct errors in index,
helical angle, tooth profile and eccentricity. The process can also improve tooth surface finish and eliminate, by crowned tooth forms, the danger of tooth end load concentrations
in service. Shaving provides for form modifications that reduce gear noise. These modifications can also increase
the gear's load carrying capacity, its factor of safety and its service life.
The proper design or selection of gear cutting tools requires thorough and detailed attention from the tool designer. In addition to experience, intuition and practical knowledge, a
good understanding of profile calculations is very important.
One of the current research
activities here at California State University at Fullerton is systematization of existing knowledge of design of planetary gear trains.
This paper presents two new techniques for
aligning and maintaining large ring gears. One technique uses lubricant temperature analysis, and the other uses stop action photography.
Hobbing is probably the most popular gear manufacturing process. Its inherent accuracy and productivity makes it
a logical choice for a wide range of sizes.
Your May/June issue contains a
letter from Edward Ubert of Rockwell
International with some serious questions
about specifying and measuring tooth thickness.
The fundamental purpose of gear
grinding is to consistently and economically produce "hard" or "soft" gear tooth elements within the accuracy required by the gear functions. These gear elements include tooth profile, tooth spacing, lead or parallelism, axial profile, pitch line runout, surface finish, root fillet profile,
and other gear geometry which contribute
to the performance of a gear train.