Joe Arvin comments on his recent trip to Scandinavia and how U.S. defense dollars are being spent overseas. J.D. Smith responds to an article on gear noise from the previous issue.
In ParI 1 several scuffing (scoring) criteria were shown ultimately to converge into one criterion, the original flash temperature criterion according to Blok. In Part 2 it will be shown that all geometric influences may be concentrated in one factor dependent on only four independent parameters, of which the gear ratio, the number of teeth of the pinion, and the addendum modification coefficient of the pinion are significant.
How important is the right choice of coupling in determining successful machine design? Consider the following
example. A transmission of appropriate size was needed to transfer the speed of the engine driver to that of the driven generator. The transmission was properly selected and sized to endure the rated power requirements indefinitely, but after only a short time in operation, it failed anyway. What happened? The culprit in the case was a coupling. It provided the necessary power and protection against misalignment but it lacked the ability to isolate the gears from the torque
peaks of the diesel engine.
Noisy gear trains have been a common problem for gear designers for a long time. With the demands for smaller gear boxes transmitting more power at higher
rpms and incumbent demands for greater efficiency, gear engineers are always searching for new ways to reduce vibration and limit noise without increasing costs.
The load capacity rating of gears had its beginning in the 18th century at Leiden University when Prof. Pieter van
Musschenbroek systematically tested the wooden teeth of windmill gears, applying the bending strength formula published by Galilei one century earlier. In the next centuries several scientists improved or extended the formula, and recently a Draft International Standard could be presented.
A change has taken place within the industry that is going to have an enormous effect on the marketing, sales, and purchasing of gear manufacturing and related equipment. This change was the American Gear Manufacturers' Association, first biennial combination technical conference and machine tool minishow.
Crossed helical gear sets are used to transmit power and motion between non-intersecting and non-parallel axes. Both of the gears that mesh with each other are involute helical gears, and a point contact is made between them. They can stand a small change in the center distance and the shaft angle without any impairment in the accuracy of transmitting motion.
Gear noise can be a source of intense annoyance. It is often the primary source of annoyance even when it is not the loudest noise component. This is because of the way it is perceived. Gear noise is a collection of pure tones which the human ear can detect even when they are 10dB lower than the overall noise level. Another reason for our sensitivity to transmission noise is that we associate it with impending mechanical failure.
In the gearing industry, gears are lubricated and cooled by various methods. At low to moderate speeds and loads, gears may be partly submerged in the lubricant which provides lubrication and cooling by splash lubrication. With splash lubrication, power loss increases considerably with speed. This is partially because of churning losses. It is shown that gear scoring and surface pitting can occur when the gear teeth are not adequately lubricated and cooled.
In robot configurations it is desirable to be able to obtain an arbitrary orientation of the output element or end-effector. This implies a minimum of two independent rotations about two (generally perpendicular) intersecting axes. If, in addition, the out element performs a mechanical task such as in manufacturing or assembly (e.g., drilling, turning, boring, etc.) it may be necessary for the end-effector to rotate about its axis. If such a motion is to be realized with gearing, this necessitates a three-degree-of-freedom, three-dimensional gear train, which provides a mechanical drive of gyroscopic complexity; i.e., a drive with independently controlled inputs about three axes corresponding to azimuth, nutation, and spin.