Rotary gear honing is a hard gear finishing process that was developed to improve the sound characteristics of hardened gears by: Removing nicks and burrs; improving surface finish; and making minor corrections in tooth irregularities caused by heat-treat distortion.

Gear manufacturing schedules that provide both quality and economy are dependent on efficient quality control techniques with reliable measuring equipment. Given the multitude of possible gear deviations, which can be found only by systematic and detailed measuring of the gear teeth, adequate quality control systems are needed. This is especially true for large gears, on which remachining or rejected workpieces create very high costs. First, observation of the gears allows adjustment of the settings on the equipment right at the beginning of the process and helps to avoid unproductive working cycles. Second, the knowledge of deviations produced on the workpiece helps disclose chance inadequacies on the production side: e.g., faults in the machines and tools used, and provides an opportunity to remedy them.

A change has taken place within the industry that is going to have an enormous effect on the marketing, sales, and purchasing of gear manufacturing and related equipment. This change was the American Gear Manufacturers' Association, first biennial combination technical conference and machine tool minishow.

Gear noise can be a source of intense annoyance. It is often the primary source of annoyance even when it is not the loudest noise component. This is because of the way it is perceived. Gear noise is a collection of pure tones which the human ear can detect even when they are 10dB lower than the overall noise level. Another reason for our sensitivity to transmission noise is that we associate it with impending mechanical failure.

In the design of any new gear drive, the performance of previous similar designs is very carefully considered. In the course of evaluating one such new design, the authors were faced with the task of comparing it with two similar existing systems, both of which were operating quite successfully. A problem arose, however, when it was realized that the bending stress levels of the two baselines differed substantially. In order to investigate these differences and realistically compare them to the proposed new design, a three-dimensional finite-element method (FEM) approach was applied to all three gears.

Gears are currently run at high speed and under high load. It is a significant problem to develop lubricants and gears with high load-carrying capacity against scoring. The particles of molybdenum disulfide have been considered to increase the scoring resistance of the gears. The wear characteristics and the scoring resistance of the gears lubricated with MoS2 paste and MoS2 powder have been investigated. (1) However, there are few investigations on the performance of the gears coated with MoS2 film with respect to scoring.

The most conclusive test of bevel and hypoid gears is their operation under normal running conditions in their final mountings. Testing not only maintains quality and uniformity during manufacture, but also determines if the gears will be satisfactory for their intended applications.

Anyone involved in the design, manufacture and use of gears is concerned with three general characteristics relative to their application: noise, accuracy, and strength or surface durability. In the article, we will be dealing with probably the most aggravating of the group, gear noise.

It has previously been demonstrated that one gear of an interchangeable series will rotate with another gear of the same series with proper tooth action. It is, therefore, evident that a tooth curve driven in unison with a mating blank, will "generate" in the latter the proper tooth curve to mesh with itself.

Gear shaving is a free-cutting gear finishing operation which removes small amounts of metal from the working surfaces of the gear teeth. Its purpose is to correct errors in index, helical angle, tooth profile and eccentricity. The process can also improve tooth surface finish and eliminate, by crowned tooth forms, the danger of tooth end load concentrations in service. Shaving provides for form modifications that reduce gear noise. These modifications can also increase the gear's load carrying capacity, its factor of safety and its service life.