Hobs, broaches, shaper cutters,
shaver cutters, milling cutters,
and bevel cutters used in the
manufacture of gears are commonly
made of high speed steel. These specialized gear cutting tools often require properties, such as toughness or manufacturability, that are difficult to achieve with carbide, despite the developments in carbide cutting tools for end mills, milling cutters, and tool inserts.
Flexibility and productivity are the keywords in today’s grinding operations. Machines are becoming
more flexible as manufacturers look
for ways to produce more parts at a
lower cost. What used to take two
machines or more now takes just one.
To meet the future goals of higher productivity and lower production costs, the cutting speeds and feeds in modern gear hobbing applications have to increase further. In several cases, coated carbide tools have replaced the commonly used high speed steel (HSS) tools.
Load-carrying capacity of gears, especially the surface durability, is influenced by their tooth surface
roughness in addition to their tooth profiles and tooth traces.
Welcome to Revolutions, the column that brings you the latest, most up-to-date and easy-to-read information about the people and technology of the gear industry.
In the past, the blades of universal face hobbing cutters had to be resharpened on three faces. Those three faces formed the active part of the blade. In face hobbing, the effective cutting direction changes dramatically with respect to the shank of the blade. Depending on the individual ratio, it was found that optimal conditions for the chip removal action (side rake, side relief and hook angle) could just be established by adjusting all major parameters independently. This, in turn, results automatically in the need for the grinding or resharpening of the front face and the two relief surfaces in order to control side rake, hook angle and the relief and the relief angles of the cutting and clearance side.