After the founding of new China, especially since the reform and opening up, the technology of gear transmission has made great progress. The application of some new technologies and interdisciplinary penetration promote the development of gear design technology and manufacturing technology. Among them, the meshing principle and the design technology represented by CAD, the surface engineering technology represented by tribology, and the process technology represented by precision forming are more prominent. The research and application of these new technologies have raised the gear technology in China to a new level. In addition, a variety of transmission forms have been developed, the harmonic drive is becoming more and more mature, and several new types of gear drive have come out one after another, such as step type involute cylindrical gear drive, R-V drive, point line mesh involute gear drive, special gear pump and so on. But it is the involute hard tooth surface gear drive, the circular arc gear drive, the worm gear drive and the bevel gear drive that play the leading role in the industry.
2. Involute gear with hard tooth surface
Involute gear transmission is the most widely used form of gear transmission in the world. From 1960s to 1970s, the involute gears in our country mostly adopt hobbing technology. The gears produced by this method have low hardness, low contact strength and short service life. By the 1980s, the former Ministry of mechanical industry had done a lot of work on the research and development of the hard tooth surface technology. The Institute and the factory combined to introduce and digest the technology, mastered the hard tooth surface grinding technology of gears, and achieved gratifying results. At present, our country can produce high-speed gearbox with the speed of more than 125m / s, which solves the urgent need of large-scale chemical fertilizer and other major equipment.
2. Circular arc gear drive
It has been more than 40 years since the arc gear was introduced into China from abroad. Because of its good meshing lubrication performance, convenient processing and simplicity, it has got a good development environment in China. From single circular arc tooth to double circular arc tooth, from soft tooth surface to hard tooth surface, Chinese engineers have created circular arc gear technology with Chinese characteristics. Today, the high-speed circular arc gear accounts for 80% of China’s high-speed gear, with a pitch speed of 120m / s, a load factor of 2MPa and a transmission power of 9000kw (see Table 4). For low-speed and heavy-duty double circular arc gears, the transmission power can reach 5000kW, and the maximum module is equal to 30mm.
3. Worm and bevel gear drive
In the 1970s, the research of worm drive has been developed in China, and the double enveloping hourglass worm drive has reached the international advanced level, and has been applied in the screwdown device of large-scale metallurgical rolling mill.
China has introduced and digested the Gleason tooth cutting technology and machine tools of the United States since the 1970s. In the 1990s, Oricon and Klingenberg’s tooth cutting techniques were also studied. At the end of the 20th century, China successfully developed CNC spiral bevel gear cutter.
