The world is changing. I've just returned from the AGMA Annual Meeting in Scottsdale, AZ. Like always, it was a great opportunity to visit with peers, colleagues, customers and competitors in the gear industry. But this year's event was far more than just a chance to
reunite with old friends. No, this year's annual meeting was also a wake-up call.
Gear honing is a highly productive process for the production of small and
medium sized gears and is used mainly in the serial production of the automotive
industry. The low robustness of the process is a particular challenge in gear
honing. The consequences range from an inadequate gear quality to an early breakage of the honing tool. In order to describe the processmachine interaction, the machining forces must be known.
This paper outlines the basic principles of involute
gear generation by using a milling cutter;
the machine and cutting tool requirements; similarities
and differences with other gear generative methods; the cutting strategy; and setup adjustments options. It also discusses the applications that would benefit the most: for coarse-pitch gears the generative gear milling technologies offer improved efficiency, expanded machine pitch capacity, decreased cutter cost, and a possibility for reducing the number of machining operations.
The paper is not the proof of a discovery, but it is the description of a method: the
optimization of the microgeometry for cylindrical gears. The method has been applied and described on some transmissions with helical gears and compound epicyclic, used on different hybrid vehicles. However, the method is also valid for industrial gearboxes.
Last year, Hot Wheels celebrated its 50th anniversary. While a writing gig in manufacturing and engineering probably sounded surreal to the 8-year-old version of this author, truth be told, he was obsessed with Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys for most of his childhood. Somewhere in a box in the basement there’s a 1967 Camaro and a 1953 Corvette
that would still bring a smile to this face.
A reader asks: I'd like to know about the different approaches and factors considered while determining the value of Ka in regards to the DIN 3990 and AGMA standards.