When a gear set is to be designed for a new application, the minimum size gears with the required capacity are desired. These gears must be capable of meeting the power, speed, ratio, life, and reliability requirements.
In conventional gear grinders, grinding wheels with Alundum grains and a hardness of about 2000 HV have been used for finishing steel gears with hardnesses up to about 1000HV. In this case, the accuracy of the gears ground is greatly affected by wear of the grinding wheel because the difference in hardness is comparatively small when the gears are fully hardened.
In robot configurations it is desirable to be able to obtain an arbitrary orientation of the output element or end-effector. This implies a minimum of two independent rotations about two (generally perpendicular) intersecting axes. If, in addition, the out element performs a mechanical task such as in manufacturing or assembly (e.g., drilling, turning, boring, etc.) it may be necessary for the end-effector to rotate about its axis. If such a motion is to be realized with gearing, this necessitates a three-degree-of-freedom, three-dimensional gear train, which provides a mechanical drive of gyroscopic complexity; i.e., a drive with independently controlled inputs about three axes corresponding to azimuth, nutation, and spin.
Curvic Couplings were first introduced in 1942 to meet the need for permanent couplings and releasing couplings (clutches), requiring extreme accuracy and maximum load carrying capacity, together with a fast rate of production. The development of the Curvic Coupling stems directly from the manufacture of Zerol and spiral bevel gears since it is made on basically similar machines and also uses similar production methods. The Curvic Coupling can therefore lay claim to the same production advantages and high precision associated with bevel gears.
Recently it has been suggested that the transverse plane may be very useful in studying the kinematics and dynamics of spiral bevel gears. The transverse plane is perpendicular to the pitch and axial planes as shown in Fig. 1. Buckingham has suggested that a spiral bevel gear may be viewed as a limited form of a "stepped" straight-tooth gear as in Fig. 2. The transverse plane is customarily used in the study of straight toothed bevel gears.
The power of high speed gears for use in the petrochemical industry and power stations is always increasing. Today gears with ratings of up to 70,000kW are already in service. For such gears, the failure mode of scoring can become the limiting constraint. The validity of an analytical method to predict scoring resistance is, therefore, becoming increasingly important.
Transmission of power between nonparallel shafts is inherently more difficult than transmission between parallel shafts, but is justified when it saves space and results in more compact, more balanced designs. Where axial space is limited compared to radial space, angular drives are preferred despite their higher initial cost. For this reason, angular gear motors and worm gear drives are used extensively in preference to parallel shaft drives, particularly where couplings, brakes, and adjustable mountings add to the axial space problem of parallel shaft speed reducers.
The search for greater gear life involves improvement in cost, weight and increased power output. There are many events that affect gear life, and this paper addresses those relating to fatigue, gear tooth pitting, fatigue strength losses due to the heat treating processes and shot peening technique. The capability of shot peening to increase fatigue strength and surface fatigue life eliminate machine marks which cause stress risers, and to aid in lubrication when properly controlled, suggests increased use and acceptance of the process.
Mechanical efficiency is an important index of gearing, especially for epicyclic gearing. Because of its compact size, light weight, the capability of a high speed ratio, and the ability to provide differential action, epicyclic gearing is very versatile, and its use is increasing. However, attention should be paid to efficiency not only to save energy, but sometimes also to make the transmission run smoothly or to avoid a self-locking condition.
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.