Another young man discovers you need not be an expert machinist to succeed as a gear engineer. Spoiler alert: never tangle with a grinding wheel; they are undefeated in all time.
Manufacturing involute gears using form grinding or form milling wheels are beneficial to hobs in some
special cases, such as small scale production and, the obvious, manufacture of internal gears. To
manufacture involute gears correctly the form wheel must be purpose-designed, and in this paper the
geometry of the form wheel is determined through inverse calculation. A mathematical model is presented
where it is possible to determine the machined gear tooth surface in three dimensions, manufactured by this tool, taking the finite number of cutting edges into account. The model is validated by comparing calculated results with the observed results of a gear manufactured by an indexable insert milling cutter.
Product announcements so often trumpet minor, incremental advances with works like "revolutionary" and "unique" that even the best thesaurus can fail to offer a fresh alternative to alert the reader when something really innovative and important is introduced. In the case of Mitsubishi's new CNC gear shaper, the ST25CNC, both terms apply.