In the 18th century, the French geometer T. Olivier first proposed the concept of spiral bevel gear, but due to the processing technical conditions at that time, spiral bevel gear could not be processed. This situation was not until the 20th century, the emergence of spiral bevel gear processing machine tools was able to process spiral bevel gears.
In 1913, James Gleason, an engineer of Gleason company, designed a machine tool for milling spiral bevel gears by hand end face method. In 1919, Paul Bottcher’s invention patent for single tooth indexing processing was obtained by Gleason company. Ernest wildhaber introduced the concept of involute spiral bevel gear and designed a typical spiral bevel gear processing machine tool Gleason No.16. The cross-sectional coefficient of the gear teeth processed by this machine tool maintains a uniform ratio from the large end to the small section, so that the top surface of the small end of the spiral bevel gear teeth will no longer become sharp, and the interference relationship between the tool and the workpiece in the cutting process is improved.
In the 1980s, Oerlikon company pioneered the application of PLC (programmable logic controller) to its latest; Spiral bevel gear processing machine tool S17 machine tool, since then, spiral bevel gear technology has entered the processing control stage of programmable logic controller.
In the s of the 20th century, Gleason company took the lead in manufacturing gmaxx 2010 gear cutting machine tool, which can select both continuous indexing method and single tooth indexing method according to production needs. It uses the full CNC system to control the coordinated movement between the machine tool shaking table, cutter head and workpiece, which improves the spiral bevel gear processing technology to a higher level. In the s of the 20th century, Gleason company launched Phoenix series full CNC free form machine tools, which removed the complex mechanisms such as shaking table, tool inclination and denaturation of traditional machine tools, and completely innovated the design concept of gear cutting machine tools.
The spiral bevel gear processing machine tool with six coordinates can manufacture both circular arc gear and cycloid gear through the coordinated work of six axes. At present, Gleason has launched “Phoenix II” series CNC gear grinding machine tools, as shown in the figure. The Phoenix II machine tool adopts a new integral bed design method, which greatly reduces the service area. Its feature is that the spindle of the machine tool is directly driven by the digital servo motor, which saves the number of mechanical transmission elements and speeds up the driving speed, and significantly shortens the gear grinding cycle of the machine tool.