W.Edward Deming’s quality management system was credited with resurrecting and changing Japan’s manufacturing economy after World War II. Experts t...

I’ve just come back from the AGMA annual meeting in Napa, California, where I had a great time visiting with friends and colleagues in the gear industry. As always, the annual meeting was a great opportunity to network and meet with other AGMA members.

If you occasionally buy a lottery ticket, you probably enjoy speculating on what you would do with the money. The only assured value of a ticket is...

[starbox]Last week’s blog on the Century of AGMA Timeline brought to mind a humorous story of our now adult daughter’s first “play store” set. If y...

[starbox]The American Gear Manufacturers Association (www.agma.org) will be celebrating its centennial in 2016. In preparation for the big party, t...

The geometry of the bevel gear is quite complicated to describe mathematically, and much of the overall surface topology of the tooth flank is dependent on the machine settings and cutting method employed. AGMA 929-A06 — Calculation of Bevel Gear Top Land and Guidance on Cutter Edge Radius — lays out a practical approach for predicting the approximate top-land thicknesses at certain points of interest — regardless of the exact machine settings that will generate the tooth form. The points of interest that AGMA 929-A06 address consist of toe, mean, heel, and point of involute lengthwise curvature. The following method expands upon the concepts described in AGMA 929-A06 to allow the user to calculate not only the top-land thickness, but the more general case as well, i.e. — normal tooth thickness anywhere along the face and profile of the bevel gear tooth. This method does not rely on any additional machine settings; only basic geometry of the cutter, blank, and teeth are required to calculate fairly accurate tooth thicknesses. The tooth thicknesses are then transformed into a point cloud describing both the convex and concave flanks in a global, Cartesian coordinate system. These points can be utilized in any modern computer-aided design software package to assist in the generation of a 3D solid model; all pertinent tooth macrogeometry can be closely simulated using this technique. A case study will be presented evaluating the accuracy of the point cloud data compared to a physical part.

How should we consider random helix angle errors fHβ and housing machining errors when calculating KHβ? What is a reasonable approach?

This issue, GT Extras brings you "Heat Treat and Induction Hardening of Industrial Gears," a treasure trove of heat treating related technical articles and a call for help in preparation for AGMA's 100th anniversary.

[starbox] A few years ago I presented a paper on reverse engineering at the AGMA Fall Technical Meeting. I heard through the grapevine that some f...

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