This article introduces the process of polish grinding of gears. Improved surface quality increases the overall efficiency of gearboxes, resulting in reduced friction and torque loss, higher power density, and noise-optimized gears (lower NVH); all these factors are highly relevant, especially for electric drives. When Reishauer developed polish grinding in 2012, the process aimed to improve the efficiency of ICE engine transmissions, and the set goals were easy to achieve. Today, in 2023, the situation is dramatically different. While an ICE engine operates at around 3,000 rpm and supplies acoustic masking of the gear noise, EV drivetrains feature up to 20,000 rpm and offer no such masking.
This article describes a cloud-based process and machine component monitoring system called ARGUS. The term “swarm” is used for a large population of gear-grinding machines of individual and independent customers connected to the ARGUS system and the ARGUS cloud. These “swarm” machines permanently feed their anonymized process data into a common cloud database. Reishauer uses this database for big data analytics to discover patterns that indicate successful process and machine component behavior patterns worth integrating into the ARGUS algorithms and propagate them across the complete ARGUS customer base.
This paper introduces the latest process developments for the hard-finishing of gears, specifically in regard to controlling the so-called flank twist.