November/December 1999

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Publisher's Page

The Success of Our Customers

No matter what business you're in, you need customers. More importantly, you need customers who can and want to pay for your goods or services. It's in our best interest to do everything we can to make sue our customers are successful with the products or services they buy from us, as I believe that our wages are paid not by our companies but by their customers.

Technical Articles

Definition and Inspection of Profile and Lead of a Worm Wheel

Traditionally, profile and lead inspections have been indispensable portions of a standard inspection of an involute gear. This also holds true for the worm of a worm gear drive (Ref. 1). But the inspection of the profile and the lead is rarely performed on a worm wheel. One of the main reasons is our inability to make good definitions of these two elements (profile and lead) for the worm wheel. Several researchers have proposed methods for profile and lead inspections of a worm wheel using CNC machines or regular involute and lead inspections of a worm wheel using CNC machines or regular involute measuring machines. Hu and Pennell measured a worm wheel's profile in an "involute" section and the lead on the "pitch" cylinder (Ref. 2). This method is applicable to a convolute helicoid worm drive with a crossing angle of 90 degrees because the wheel profile in one of the offset axial planes is rectilinear. This straight profile generates an involute on the generated worm wheel. Unfortunately, because of the hob oversize, the crossing angle between the hob and the worm wheel always deviates from 90 degrees by the swivel angle. Thus, this method can be implemented only approximately by ignoring the swivel angle. Another shortcoming of this method is that there is only one profile and one lead on each flank. If the scanned points deviated from this curve, it produced unreal profile deviation. Octrue discussed profile inspection using a profile checking machine (Ref. 3).

Hard Gear Finishing with a Geometrically Defined Cutting Edge

The market demand for gear manufacturers to transmit higher torques via smaller-sized gear units inevitably leads to the use of case-hardened gears with high manufacturing and surface quality. In order to generate high part quality, there is an increasing trend towards the elimination of the process-induced distortion that occurs during heat treatment by means of subsequent hard finishing.

Feature Articles

Coordinate Measuring Machines and the Gear Industry

Gears are extremely complex shapes. Coordinate measuring machines, or CMMs, are designed to measure complex shapes. It seems to follow that CMMs world, therefore, be the ideal tool for measuring gears. But the answer is not so simple.

Revolutions

Revolutions

Welcome to Revolutions, the column that brings you the latest, most up-to-date and easy-to-read information about the people and technology of the gear industry.

Addendum

One Fast Gear Boxx

You go, and if your name is Ryan Boxx, you go faster than everyone else. Boxx became the fastest 15-year-old in America this summer when he won his division of the National Hot Rod Association's Junior Drag Racing League National Championship.

Product News

Product News

Welcome to our Product News page. Here we feature new products of interest to the gear and gear products markets.

Industry News

Industry News

Industry News for November/December 1999.

Events

Technical Calendar

Complete Technical Calendar for November/December 1999.