Development of spiral bevel gear technology

There are three companies that provide spiral bevel gear design, manufacturing, testing technology and equipment with great influence in the world, namely Gleason in the United States, Oerlikon in Switzerland and Klingelnberg in Germany. In terms of design, they have their own mature theoretical basis, and have developed corresponding computing software systems, such as cage system of Gleason company, CDs system of Oricon company and kimos system of Klingenberg.

Klingenberg and orikon first used the end face hobbing method to process cycloidal bevel gears. Klingenberg used a double-layer cutter head to adjust the gear surface contact area by adjusting the offset between the rotation center of the outer cutting blade (processing gear concave surface) and the rotation center of the inner cutting blade (processing gear convex surface), The cyclo paloid (cycloid quasi involute) tooth system is formed. The company has developed AMK series mechanical gear milling machine and KNC series automatic CNC gear milling machine. Some models of AMK series machine tools can be used for scraping hard tooth surface; KNC series gear milling machine can automatically change tools and load and unload workpieces, with high production efficiency. At the same time, the machine tool also has networking function and great flexibility.

Oricon controls the tooth contact area by tilting the cutter head spindle. The early gear milling machine models of Aolikang company, such as SKM2 and SM3 gear milling machines, are equipped with TC or en gear milling cutter discs of standard series to process cycloidal bevel gears. This kind of machine tool adopts plate cutter tilt mechanism, and the adjustment range of cutter tilt is small. The purpose of cutter tilt is mainly to avoid secondary cutting. It is very inconvenient to adjust the contact area of bevel gear pair during machining. In view of this, the company has improved the S series gear milling machine launched later. The rotary cutter tilt mechanism is adopted to increase the range of cutter tilt angle, and the maximum cutter tilt angle can be adjusted to 30 degrees or more. In terms of cutter head, the old standard series cutter head is abandoned and the new FS and FN cutter head are adopted. The tool tip diameter and the pressure angle of the cutter teeth can be adjusted within a certain range according to the requirements of the contact area of the bevel gear pair, which is guaranteed by the NC cutter grinder during the grinding of the cutter teeth. The calculation method of gear cutting adjustment is also improved. The tooth surface shape is corrected with the help of large tool inclination, variable cutter head radius and cutter tooth pressure angle. Through these improvements, the convenience of adjusting the contact area of bevel gear pair is greatly enhanced.

In the 21st century, Oricon company was acquired by Klingenberg company and assembled a new Klingenberg Oricon company. The strength of the company has been greatly enhanced, and a new C series Austrian six axis CNC gear milling machine has been developed. The machining accuracy of its bevel gear, especially in terms of machining efficiency, has been significantly improved. Therefore, its complete set of technology has gradually been valued and promoted by the industry. In the early stage, Gleason mainly studied the technology of machining arc bevel gear by end face milling method, introduced many new technologies and processing methods, and developed a series of arc bevel gear milling machines, gear drawing machines, gear lapping machines, rolling inspection machines and gear grinding machines. It represents the highest international technical level in this field. The bevel gear products processed with its complete set of processing technology were once significantly higher than those of Oricon in terms of processing accuracy and quality. Through long-term accumulation and constantly absorbing the technical characteristics of all parties, several companies are constantly improving their theoretical system and improving the processing function of their machine tools. Gleason company has added the function of machining Cycloid Bevel Gear with end face hobbing method to its new generation of fully CNC Phoenix II gear milling machine, while the c-series gear milling machine of Klingenberg orikon company also has the ability to process arc bevel gear [5], and both of them use tool inclination to increase the ability of the machine tool to correct the tooth surface shape.

Gleason’s complete processing equipment and technology of arc bevel gear were introduced in China in the 1970s. Through the technical breakthrough of industry experts, great progress has been made in the technology of using end face milling to process arc bevel gears. At present, we have developed mature software for arc bevel gear design and gear cutting adjustment calculation, as well as complete sets of equipment for gear cutting processing and testing, forming a complete set of system from theory, design, processing to testing, which has a small gap with the international advanced level.

Compared with the technical level of arc bevel gear, there is a big gap between domestic and foreign advanced level in the design and processing technology of swing bevel gear. In recent years, the domestic automotive gear industry has introduced a new Oricon C series gear milling machine and CDs software to process the rear axle main drive Cycloid Bevel Gears for high-end cars, commercial vehicles and buses with high noise requirements, such as an automobile axle branch, Hubei automobile axle Co., Ltd. Some companies also use Phoenix II gear milling machine imported from Gleason company to process cycloidal bevel gears for automobile rear axle by using dry cutting technology, such as Zhuzhou Gear Co., Ltd. The heavy machinery industry imported the AMK series gear milling machine and related software of Klingenberg company, and adopted the scraping process of hard tooth surface, which greatly improved the product quality. Although domestic enterprises can use imported machine tools and software systems to process qualified Cycloid Bevel gear products, this technology has always been monopolized by Klingenberg orikon and Gleason.

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