Analysis and Simulation of Different Manufacturing Processes for Bevel Gear Cutting

Today manufacturers of bevel gears are confronted with continuously growing demands on the cost effectiveness of the manufacturing process. To enhance the productivity of manufacturing processes, the processing time has to be reduced. Therefore maximum removal rates and reliable, reproducible processes are of crucial importance for modern production operations. In current industrial practice, however, even slight changes in the cutting parameters, tool geometry or even the gear geometry can result in significant variations in tool life behavior. The knowledge of the chip creation parameters is of crucial importance in order to analyze the manufacturing process. For this reason a new software tool for the simulation of cutting processes for bevel gears was developed. As a result the chip thickness, effective cutting velocities, effective cutting length and the process forces are calculated. With this software it is now possible to give a detailed insight into the cutting process and to estimate the load on the tool and the tool life. In this paper the calculation of the mentioned chip creation parameters is presented for different manufacturing parameters. This gives a first understanding of the different loads on the cutting edge of the tool.