COMPUTERIZED MODELING AND SIMULATION OF SPIRAL BEVEL AND HYPOID GEARS MANUFACTURED BY GLEASON FACE HOBBING PROCESS

摘要

The Gleason face hobbing process has been widely applied by the gear industry. But so far few papers have been found regarding the mathematic models of the tooth surface generations and tooth contact analysis (TCA). This paper presents the generalized theory of the face hobbing generation method, mathematic models of tooth surface generations and the simulation of meshing of face hobbed spiral bevel and hypoid gears. A generalized description of the cutting blades is introduced by considering four segments of the blade edge geometry. A kinematical model of a bevel gear generator is developed by breaking down the machine tool settings and the relative motions of the machine elemental units and applying coordinate transformations of the elemental motions. A generalized and enhanced TCA algorithm is proposed. The face hobbing process has two categories of generation methods applied to the gear tooth surface generations, which are non-generated (Formate®) and generated methods. In both categories the pinions are always finished with the generated method. The proposed tooth surface generation model covers both categories with left-hand and right-hand members. Based upon the developed theory, an advanced tooth surface generation and TCA program is developed and integrated into Gleason CAGE™ for Windows System. Two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the implementation of the developed mathematic models.