In 1913, Gleason company of the United States successfully developed the first circular arc bevel gear machine with single tooth indexing machining by end milling cutter, but it was not perfect in both structure and performance. After continuous improvement, it was developed into No.116 machine tool. Subsequently, the mechanical machine tool No.26 and semi numerical control machine tools No.640 and no.655 introduced by the company are typical machine tools for manufacturing spiral bevel gears, and their powerful mechanical functions make them still used today. By the end of 1980s, the company launched the Phoenix series full CNC machine tools with free form structure, as shown in Figure 1. It is a six axis five linkage universal machine tool, which greatly simplifies the mechanical structure of the traditional machine tool, makes the control of the machine tool easier, and improves the machining accuracy by 1-2 levels compared with the traditional machine tool. At present, Phoenix II gear cutting machine and gear grinding machine have been produced. Matched with its CNC device, Gleason developed the corresponding CAE software system from gear design, processing to detection, and jointly developed the Zeiss coordinate measurement and error analysis system with the German company, which is connected with Gleason machine tool to form an error closed-loop system to complete the correction in one or two trial cuts.
The mechanical gear milling machines developed by Oerlikon company include skm1, SKM2, SM3, S17 and S19. At first, the inclination of the cutter shaft of the machine tool was used to prevent the interference of the tooth top during machining. With the increase of the inclination range of the cutter shaft, the correction of the contact area of the tooth surface was further realized. In 1973, Oerlikon company applied PLC control to S17 machine tool for the first time, marking that spiral bevel gear and hypoid gear cutting machine tool entered a simple numerical control stage. After that, Oerlikon company developed S25 and S35 of the full numerical control gear milling machine to realize the automatic adjustment of the machine tool, and can process the gears in the form of arc and cycloid.
The mechanical gear milling machines of Klingeinberg company have AMK series. Some models of machine tools can be used for scraping hard tooth surfaces, mainly using double-layer cutter heads. The CNC gear washing machine has KNC series, which realizes the automatic adjustment of the machine tool, automatic tool change and workpiece loading and unloading. It can also correct the tooth surface contact area through the display of the operation position. After acquiring Oerlikon company, Klingeinberg company developed c series full CNC gear cutting machine tools, and added arc gear machining and dry cutting functions to C series machine tools. Figure 2 shows Oerlikon C22 gear cutting machine.
At present, the KNC series Cycloid Bevel Gear processing machine tool launched by Klingeinberg company in Germany has three processing coordinate axes and six adjustment coordinate axes. The processing coordinate axes are equipped with adjustable drive systems, which are combined with measurement technology to realize the functions of automatic calculation, analysis, measurement and adjustment of machine tool parameters, The machining accuracy and production efficiency are improved.