MACHINE AND PROCESS FOR FORMING LONGITUDINALLY CURVED TOOTH GEARS

摘要

The present invention pertains to the field of gear manufacture, in particular, to a method and machine for forming longitudinally curved tooth surfaces in bevel and hypoid gears. A dish-shaped grinding wheel (26) is rotated about its axis (76) and oscillated about a cradle axis (66) in a timed relationship with a relative reciprocation of a work gear (20) along cradle axis (66). The timed relationship is defined by a power series equation to permit simultaneous form grinding of adjacent tooth sides of one member of a work gear pair to be appropriately mismatched with simultaneously generated adjacent tooth sides of the mating member of the gear pair. A dish-shaped grinding wheel (176) having inner and outer stock removing surfaces (178), (180) for working opposite sides of gear teeth is also used in accordance with special timed motions of the present invention to improve contact characteristics between mating gear teeth.