Press quenching is designed to harden steel gears while minimizing distortion, and the process is especially applied for hardening large diameter thin-wall gears, face gears and bevel gears. The dimensional control aims at maintaining flatness, out-of-round, straightness and consistency of radial size. The press quench tooling and the process design have been mainly experience-based, using a trial and error approach for implementation of new processes, new gear materials and gear configurations.

The aim of the study was to apply such a specialized tooth contact analysis method, well-used within the steel gear community, to a polymer gear application to assess what modifications need be made to these models for them to be applicable to polymer gears.