With the development of electronic technology, computer control technology and numerical control technology, the full digital control of gear shaping is the inevitable trend of its development. The computer program and its hardware are used to control each moving executive part separately, and the complex transmission chain of the traditional mechanical gear shaper is separated, so that each transmission element can participate in the gear shaper processing with the shortest transmission chain, thus avoiding the processing error caused by the transmission error, reducing the design difficulty of the machine tool, and improving the rigidity of the whole machine, It plays an important role in improving the machining accuracy of gears.

Theoretically, the realization of NC machining can be divided into the following two ways:

(1) Hardware based approach

Since the birth of machine tools, people began to explore how to introduce automatic control into the field of machining. With the advent of the computer age, the traditional machine tools can finally enter a new era of numerical control under the guidance of the powerful computing power of the computer. Nowadays, CNC machine tools and CNC systems are rich in variety and complete in function. The CNC industry has become an important part of the national economy indisputably. There are mainly the following ways to realize the hardware: CNC system based on MCU, CNC system based on motion control card, PC embedded in NC, NC embedded in PC and so on. At present, the CNC system based on hardware is still the mainstream.

(2) Full software implementation mode

With the continuous improvement of computer performance, the traditional CNC system based on hardware can also be realized by software. Moreover, with the emergence of a new generation of CNC system development platform, the dependence of CNC system software on hardware is greatly reduced, and it is possible for different CNC systems to realize cross platform migration. This will reduce the development cost and improve the excellent rate of system code.

Of course, there are still many problems in the way of full software implementation, which can not replace the hardware based CNC system at present. Because more than one processor is used in the CNC system based on hardware, the whole machine has strong performance. The CNC system can easily realize complex operation, data communication, graphics processing and display, showing a strong vitality.

Compared with the gear shaping NC machining of spur gear, the gear shaping NC machining of spiral gear is more difficult in motion control because it involves the formation of helix. Specifically, when the spindle stroke of gear shaper cutter reaches hundreds or even thousands of times per minute, the additional rotation of gear shaper cutter or workpiece can be realized to ensure the rapid and accurate processing of involute spiral surface. According to the different principles, there are two schemes for the CNC machining of spiral gears: semi digital control and full digital control.