Parametric Analysis of the End Face Engagement Worm Gear

A novel specific type of worm drive, so-called end face engagement worm gear（EFEWD）, is originally presented to minimize or overcome the gear backlash. Different factors, including the three different types, contact curves, tooth profile, lubrication angle and the induced normal curvature are taken into account to investigate the meshing characteristics and create the profile of a novel specific type of worm drive through mathematical models and theoretical analysis. The tooth of the worm wheel is very specific with the sine-shaped tooth which is located at the alveolus of the worm and the tooth profile of a worm is generated by the meshing movement of the worm wheel with the sine-shaped tooth, but just the end face of the worm（with three different typical meshing types） is adapted to meshing, and therefore an extraordinary manufacturing methods is used to generate the profile of the end face engagement worm. The research results indicates that the bearing contacts of the generated conjugate hourglass worm gear set are in line contacts, with certain advantages of no-backlash, high precision and high operating efficiency over other gears and gear systems besides the end face engagement worm gear drive may improve bearing contact, reduce the level of transmission errors and lessen the sensitivity to errors of alignment. Also, the end face engagement worm can be easily made with superior meshing and lubrication performance compared with the conventional techniques. In particular, the meshing and lubrication performance of the end face engagement worm gear by using the end face to meshing can be increased over 10% and 7%, respectively. This investigate is expect to provide a new insight on the design of the future no-backlash worm drive for industry.

Optimal Design for an End Face Engagement Worm Gear with Multiple Worm-wheel Meshing

To solve the problem for lacking a special mechanical transmission that could provide multiple outputs with high transmission efficiency and good lubrication in the modem industrial, a novel worm gear, named end face engagement worm gear, with multiple worm-wheel meshing is proposed for the first time. The essential parameters for the worm gear are optimized to enhance lubrication and meshing properties. Moreover, analysis of variance（ANOVA） is applied to determine the optimum levels and to determine the influence of parameters. The ANOVA results show that the novel end face engagement worm gear with multiple worm wheels provides high lubrication（the lubrication angle is more than 89~） and meshing performance（the induce normal curvature is less than 0.0002 mm ＇）. The interaction between center distance and roller slant distance most strongly influences the lubrication angle（contributed 51.6%）, followed by the parameters of center distance（contributed 25.0%）, roller slant distance（contributed 16.4%）, tooth angle of gear, gear ratio, and roller radius. In addition, roller radius most strongly influences the induced normal curvature（contributed 39.4%）, followed by roller slant distance（contributed 15.2%）, tooth angle of the gear（contributed 9.0%）, center distance, and gear ratio. The proposed worm gear helps to enrich the no-backlash high precision worm drive and the optimal design method can provide a useful reference on performance improvement of other worm gear.