Plastic gears are everywhere
today - throughout your car, at
the oceans' lowest depths, in deep
space. The question, when is a
metal gear a candidate for plastic
conversion, can be addressed in
three words, i.e. what's the application?
I have outsourced gear macrogeometry due to lack of resources. Now I received the output from them and one of the gears is with —0.8× module correction factor for m = 1.8 mm gear. Since bending root stress and specific slide is at par with specification, but negative correction factor —0.8× module — is quite high — how will it influence NVH behavior/transmission error? SAP and TIF are very close to
0.05 mm; how will that influence the manufacturing/cost?
Many years ago, when asked how the
five-meter gear was checked, the quality manager responded, “When they’re that big, they’re never bad!” That may have been the attitude and practice in the past, but it no longer serves the manufacturer nor the customer. Requirements have been evolving steadily, requiring gears to
perform better and last longer.