Computerized design of modified helical gears finished by plunge shaving

Among the several types of gear shaving operations, plunge shaving is used for finishing gears in mass-production due to the low cost and short machining time. Plunge shaving may be used to apply surface modifications with the purpose of reducing noise and vibration by the predesign of favorable functions of transmission errors, and modify gear tooth surfaces to avoid edge contacts and increase gear endurance, safety, and service life. A new geometry for helical gear tooth surfaces that combine the advantages of gear drives with lineal and localized contacts is proposed and obtained by plunge shaving. The shaver tooth surfaces are conjugated to those of an ideal helical gear with surface modifications. In this way, the to-be-shaved gear and the shaving cutter will be in line contact, and only a radial feed motion of the shaver is needed to generate the required pressure for the shaver to cut the excess of material on the gear tooth surfaces. A numerical example of design illustrates the advantages of the proposed geometry. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.