Micro tooth surface topography of face-milled hypoid gears

An accurate kinematic model of the face-milling process of hypoid gears has been developed in order to compute the micro tooth surface topography, generated by successive cuts of the head-cutter cutting edges, as they come into contact with the gear blank. The instantaneous gear tooth surface point has been determined at each point on each active cutting edge and from this it has been possible to predict the tooth surface roughness experienced during the machining process. The paper presents a description of the theoretical gear cutting model and the method to calculate the generated roughness of gear tooth flank. The effectiveness of the presented method is demonstrated by using a hypoid gear example. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.