Involute ring gear ball gear is a new type of gear mechanism, which plays a key role in realizing multi degree of freedom transmission. In recent years, the research on ball gear at home and abroad mostly focuses on the tooth profile theory and application analysis, and there are not many achievements in ball gear processing and manufacturing technology. Most of the manufacturing methods of ball gear pair explored in the existing available literature are traditional casting molding, forming processing, modeling processing and so on.
Casting can produce gear pairs close to the theoretical tooth shape, but the accuracy is poor and there are shrinkage defects in the casting, which affect the transmission bearing capacity. The forming process is discontinuous and the production efficiency is low. Due to the limited number of milling cutters, the machining accuracy is low, and the high-precision machining of involute ring gear ball gear can not be realized. The generating method is a good choice, but the involute ring gear ball gear is used to make the tool. Because the design and manufacture of the ball gear tooth surface pair is difficult, the tool size is fixed and difficult to change, and the size of the ball gear to be processed is limited. The five axis NC machine tool is easy to process complex profile and can realize the precise and efficient machining of involute ring gear ball gear.
With the increasing maturity of additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology and its wide application in industry, the application of additive manufacturing technology should be the development trend and direction of high-precision involute ring gear ball gear processing and manufacturing. To realize the machining and manufacturing of high-precision involute ring gear ball gear based on additive manufacturing technology, we need to solve the key technologies of involute ring gear ball gear, such as digital modeling, material selection, automatic measurement of tooth profile error, tooth end modification, tooth surface strengthening, tooth surface accuracy improvement, thermal expansion and cold contraction of powder materials, repair and optimization of STL model processing software.