Gear noise is a common evil any gear manufacturer must live with. It is often low enough not to be a major problem but, at times, gear whining may appear and then, tracking the source and, especially, curing the ill can be tricky at best.

This presentation introduces a new procedure that - derived from exact calculations - aids in determining the parameters of the validation testing of spiral bevel and hypoid gears in single-reduction axles.

In the majority of spiral bevel gears, spherical crowning is used. The contact pattern is set to the center of the active tooth flank and the extent of the crowning is determined by experience. Feedback from service, as well as from full-torque bench tests of complete gear drives, has shown that this conventional design practice leads to loaded contact patterns, which are rarely optimal in location and extent. Oversized reliefs lead to small contact area, increased stresses and noise, whereas undersized reliefs result in an overly sensitive tooth contact.

Hypoid gears are the paragon of gearing. To establish line contact between the pitches in hypoid gears, the kinematically correct pitch surfaces have to be determined based on the axoids. In cylindrical and bevel gears, the axoids are identical to the pitch surfaces and their diameter or cone angle can be calculated simply by using the knowledge about number of teeth and module or ratio and shaft angle. In hypoid gears, a rather complex approach is required to find the location of the teeth—even before any information about flank form can be considered. This article is part seven of an eight-part series on the tribology aspects of angular gear drives.

Beveloids are helical gears with nonparallel shafts, with shaft angles generally between 5 degrees and 15 degrees. This is part VI in the Tribology Aspects in Angular Transmission Systems Series

In this paper a new method for the introduction of optimal modifications into gear tooth surfaces - based on the optimal corrections of the profile and diameter of the head cutter, and optimal variation of machine tool settings for pinion and gear finishing—is presented. The goal of these tooth modifications is the achievement of a more favorable load distribution and reduced transmission error. The method is applied to face milled and face hobbed hypoid gears.

This article is part four of an eight-part series on the tribology aspects of angular gear drives. Each article will be presented first and exclusively by Gear Technology, but the entire series will be included in Dr. Stadtfeld’s upcoming book on the subject, which is scheduled for release in 2011.

Zerol bevel gears are the special case of spiral bevel gears with a spiral angle of 0°. They are manufactured in a single-indexing face milling process with large cutter diameters, an extra deep tooth profile and tapered tooth depth.

Imagine the flexibility of having one machine capable of milling, turning, tapping and gear cutting with deburring included for hard and soft material. No, you’re not in gear fantasy land. The technology to manufacture gears on non gear-dedicated, mult-axis machines has existed for a few years in Europe, but has not yet ventured into mainstream manufacturing. Deckel Maho Pfronten, a member of the Gildemeister Group, took the sales plunge this year, making the technology available on most of its 2009 machines.

This presentation is an expansion of a previous study (Ref.1) by the authors on lapping effects on surface finish and transmission errors. It documents the effects of the superfinishing process on hypoid gears, surface finish and transmission errors.