Modification Design Method for an Enveloping Hourglass Worm Gear with Consideration of Machining and Misalignment Errors

The influences of machining and misalignment errors play a very critical role in the performance of the anti-backlash double-roller enveloping hourglass worm gear(ADEHWG).However,a corresponding efficient method for eliminating or reducing these errors on the tooth profile of the ADEHWG is seldom reported.The gear engagement equation and tooth profile equation for considering six different errors that could arise from the machining and gear misalignment are derived from the theories of differential geometry and gear meshing.Also,the tooth contact analysis(TCA) is used to systematically investigate the influence of the machining and misalignment errors on the contact curves and the tooth profile by means of numerical analysis and three-dimensional solid modeling.The research results show that vertical angular misalignment of the worm wheel(Δβ) has the strongest influences while the tooth angle error(Δα) has the weakest influences on the contact curves and the tooth profile.A novel efficient approach is proposed and used to minimize the effect of the errors in manufacturing by changing the radius of the grinding wheel and the approaching point of contact.The results from the TCA and the experiment demonstrate that this tooth profile design modification method can indeed reduce the machining and misalignment errors.This modification design method is helpful in understanding the manufacturing technology of the ADEHWG.

Modeling and experiment of grinding wheel axial profiles based on gear hobs

Hobbing is one of the crucial gear manufacturing processes with high precision and high efficiency.In order to improve the accuracy of hobbing and hob relief grinding,more precise grinding wheels are demanded for relief grinding in the production of gear hobs.In this paper,a new and accurate mathematical method for calculating the axial profile of grinding wheel based on the corresponding gear hob to be ground is proposed.Considering that most researches have been conducted to focus on the optimization of hob geometric feature and only can be applied to a specific type of hand of helix and rake angle of gear hobs.The method in this paper can be served as a general algorithm for generating axial profile of grinding wheels on the basis of the spatial envelope theory,the principle of coordinate system transformation,and studies on normal profile of single-tooth.The accuracy of grinding hobs is based on applying the approach in practical manufacturing.Taking two typical different kinds of pre-grinding gear hobs as examples for calculation and experiment,the results of tooth profile errors strengthen the position that the validity and feasibility of this method,it can be employed for gear hob design and grinding processing.