Commonly used gear processing methods include milling, forming grinding, hobbing, shaving, shaping, and generating grinding.
Milling teeth: the use of disc-shaped modulus milling cutters or finger-shaped milling cutters belongs to the forming method, and the cross-sectional shape of the milling cutter teeth corresponds to the shape of the gear teeth. This method has low processing efficiency and processing accuracy, and is only suitable for single-piece small batch production.
Form grinding: It also belongs to the forming method, because the grinding wheel is not easy to dress, so it is less used.
Gear hobbing: It belongs to the generation method processing, and its working principle is equivalent to the meshing of a pair of helical gears. The prototype of the gear hob is a helical gear with a large helix angle. Due to the small number of teeth (usually the number of teeth z = 1), the teeth are very long, and a worm with a small helix angle is formed around the shaft. The shovel tooth becomes a hob with a cutting edge and a relief angle.
Shaving: Shaving is a commonly used finishing method for non-hardened tooth surfaces in mass production. Its working principle is to use the shaving cutter to freely mesh with the gear to be processed, and to shave off very fine chips from the tooth surface by means of the relative slip between the two to improve the accuracy of the tooth surface. The shaving teeth can also form drum teeth to improve the position of the contact area of the tooth surface.
Gear shaping: Gear shaping is a gear cutting process commonly used in addition to gear hobbing using the generating method.
When gear shaping, the gear shaping cutter and the workpiece are equivalent to the meshing of a pair of cylindrical gears. The reciprocating motion of the gear shaper is the main motion of the shaper, and the circular motion made by the shaper and the workpiece in a certain proportional relationship is the feed motion of the shaper.
Generating gear grinding: The cutting motion of generating gear grinding is similar to that of hobbing. It is a tooth shape finishing method, especially for hardened gears, it is often the only finishing method.
Generative grinding teeth can be ground by worm grinding wheel, conical grinding wheel or disc grinding wheel.
