Our experts discuss runout and helix accuracy, as well as the maximum number of teeth in a shaper cutter.

How well you conduct your inspections can be the difference-maker for securing high-value contracts from your customers. And as with most other segments of the gear industry, inspection continues striving to attain “exact science” status. With that thought in mind, following is a look at the state of gear inspection and what rigorous inspection practices deliver—quality.

Gleason's GMS analytical gear inspection systems provide all the right features at Eaton Corp.

A reader clarifies technology presented in the March/April 2011 issue.

Meeting the many challenges of large gear inspection.

When parts you manufacture pass through numerous processes such as deep hole drilling, machining, hobbing and grinding, a CMM is essential when your customers require 100 percent in-process and final inspection.

A new inspection method has several advantages over traditional methods, especially for very large or very small gears.

With growing markets in aerospace and energy technologies, measuring hob cutters used in gear cutting is becoming an essential requirement for workpieces and machine tools. Zoller, a provider of solutions for tool pre-setters, measuring and inspection machines and tool management software, has developed a new partnership with Ingersoll/Germany for shop floor checking of hob cutters by a combined hardware and software approach.

At Andrew Tool, CMMs have been an integral part of their manufacturing processes for years, but they had never faced a project with such intricate measurements, tight tolerances, heat treatments and a very short time frame requirement.

In comparison with the traditional gear design approach based on preselected, typically standard generating rack parameters, the Direct Gear Design method provides certain advantages for custom high-performance gear drives that include: increased load capacity, efficiency and lifetime; reduced size, weight, noise, vibrations, cost, etc. However, manufacturing such directly designed gears requires not only custom tooling, but also customization of the gear measurement methodology. This paper presents definitions of main inspection dimensions and parameters for directly designed spur and helical, external and internal gears with symmetric and asymmetric teeth.