Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ME 2252 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY - II Unit IV B
ME 2252 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY - II Unit IV B
By
UNIT IV ABRASIVE PROCESSES AND GEAR CUTTING Abrasive processes: grinding wheel specifications and selection, types of grinding process cylindrical grinding, surface grinding, centreless grinding honing, lapping, super finishing, polishing and buffing, abrasive jet machining Gear cutting, forming,generation, shaping, hobbing.
1. Casting
Sand casting, die casting and investment casting are the casting processes that are best suited for gears and are shown in fig 2.
1a. Sand Casting Characteristics: Cheaper, low quality gear in small numbers The tooling costs are reasonable. Poor Surface finish and dimensional accuracy Due to low precision and high backlash, they are noisy. They are suited for non- critical applications
Applications: (without finishing operation) Toys, small appliances, cement-mixer barrels, hoist gearbox of dam gate lifting mechanism, hand operated crane etc., Materials: C I, cast steel, bronzes, brass and ceramics.
1b. Die casting Characteristics: Better surface finish and accuracy (tooth spacing and concentricity) High tooling costs Suited for large scale production Applications. Applications: Used in instruments, cameras, business machines, washing machines, gear pumps, small speed reducers, and lawn movers. Materials: Zinc, aluminium and brass..
1c. Investment casting Characteristics: Reasonably accurate gears Applicable for a variety of materials Refractory mould material Allows high melt-temperature materials Accuracy depends on the original master pattern used for the mold. Materials: Tool steel, nitriding steel, monel, beryllium copper.
3. Injection Molding
Injection molding is used to make nonmetallic gears in various thermoplastics such as nylon and acetal. These are low precision gears in small sizes but have the advantages of low cost and the ability to be run without lubricant at light loads.
Injection Molding
Applications: Used in cameras, projectors, wind shield wipers, speedometer, lawn sprinklers, washing machine. Materials: Nylon, cellulose acetate, polystyrene, polyimide, phenolics.
4. Extruding
Extruding is used to form teeth on long rods, which are then cut into usable lengths and machined for bores and keyways etc. Nonferrous materials such as aluminum and copper alloys are commonly extruded rather than steels. This result in good surface finishes with clean edges and pore free dense structure with higher strength.
Extruding
Materials: Aluminum, copper, naval brass, architectural bronze and phosphor bronze. Applications: Splined hollow & solid shafts, sector gears are extruded
5. Cold Drawing
Cold drawing forms teeth on steel rods by drawing them through hardened dies. The cold working increases strength and reduces ductility. The rods are then cut into usable lengths and machined for bores and keyways, etc.
6. Stamping
Sheet metal can be stamped with tooth shapes to form low precision gears at low cost in high quantities. The surface finish and accuracy of these gears are poor. Applications: Toy gears, hand operated machine gears for slow speed mechanism.
6 a. Precision stamping
In precision stamping, the dies are made of higher precision with close tolerances wherein the stamped gears will not have burrs. Applications: Clock gears, watch gears etc.
7. Preforming
For close die forging the feed stock has to be very near to the net shape and this is obtained by performing.
8. Forging
The steps in forging process are represented in fig 5.
Machining
This is most widely used gear manufacturing method. Gear blank of accurate size and shape is first prepared by cutting it from metal stock. The gear blank can also be the metal casting. Gear is prepared by cutting one by one tooth in the gear blank of desired shape and size along it periphery.
Different gear cutting methods are used in this category. Two principal methods of gear manufacturing include
- gear forming, and - gear generation.
Gear forming
In gear form cutting, the cutting edge of the cutting tool has a shape identical with the shape of the space between the gear teeth. Two machining operations, milling and broaching can be employed to form cut gear teeth.
Form milling:
Forming is sub-divided into milling by disc cutters and milling by end mill cutter which are having the shape of tooth space. Form milling by disc cutter: The disc cutter shape conforms to the gear tooth space. Each gear needs a separate cutter. However, with 8 to 10 standard cutters, gears from 12 to 120 teeth can be cut with fair accuracy.
Tooth is cut one by one by plunging the rotating cutter into the blank as shown in fig 6.
To reduce costs, the same cutter is often used for the multiple-sized gears resulting in profile errors for all but one number of teeth. Form milling method is the least accurate of all the roughing methods.
Broaching
Broaching can also be used to produce gear teeth and is particularly applicable to internal teeth. The process is rapid and produces fine surface finish with high dimensional accuracy. However, because broaches are expensiveand a separate broach is required for each size of gear-this method is suitable mainly for high-quantity production.
Broaching the teeth of a gear segment by horizontal external broaching in one pass.
Gear generation
In gear generating, the tooth flanks are obtained (generated) as an outline of the subsequent positions of the cutter, which resembles in shape the mating gear in the gear pair: In gear generating, two machining processes are employed, shaping and milling. There are several modifications of these processes for different cutting tool used,
milling with a hob (gear hobbing), gear shaping with a pinion-shaped cutter, or gear shaping with a rack-shaped cutter. Gear generating is used for high production runs and for finishing cuts.
The principle of gear cutting by this process as explained above is depicted in the Figure 8. The main parameters to be controlled in the process are described below.
Cutting Speed
The downward movement of the cutter is the cutting stroke and its speed (linear) with which it comes down is the cutting speed. After the completion of cutting stroke, cutter comes back to its top position which is called return stroke. There is no cutting in the return stroke.
Depth of Cut The required depth is maintained gradually by cutting the teeth into two or three pass. In each successive pass, the depth of cut is increased as compared to its previous path. This gradual increase in depth of cut takes place by increasing the value of linear feed in return stroke.
The whole of this process is carried out in a gear shaping machine which is shown in Figure 9.
Advantages of Gear Shaping Process (a) Shorter product cycle time and suitable
for making medium and large sized gears in mass production. (b) Different types of gears can be made except worm and worm wheels. (c) Close tolerance in gear cutting can be maintained. (d) Accuracy and repeatability of gear tooth profile can be maintained comfortably.
Limitations (a) It cannot be used to make worm and work wheel which is a particular type of gear. (b) There is no cutting in the return stroke of the gear cutter, so there is a need to make return stroke faster than the cutting stroke. (c) In case of cutting of helical gears, a specially designed guide containing a particular helix and helix angle, corresponding to the teeth to be made, is always needed on urgent basis.
The main difference of this method with the previous one is that once the full length of the rack is utilized the gear cutting of operation is stopped to bring the gear blank to its starting position so that another pass of gear cutting can be started. So this operation is intermittent for cutting larger gears having large number of teeth over their periphery.
The teeth cutter gradually removes material to cut the teeth and to make the required profile. The whole operation includes some important operations. These are feeding cutter into the blank, rolling the blank intermittently and keeping cutter in mesh with the rolling gear blank. After each mesh the gear blank is rolled by an amount equal to one pitch of gear tooth.
After each cutting, the rack is withdrawn and re-meshed after the rotation of gear blank.
Rpm of both, gear blank and gear hob are so synchronized that for each revolution of gear hob the gear blank rotates by a distance equal to one pitch distance of the gear to be cut. Motion of both gear blank and hob are maintained continuously and steady. A gear hob is shown in Figure 12 and the process of gear hobbing is illustrated in Figure 13.
The hob teeth behave like screw threads, having a definite helix angle. During operation the hob is tilted to helix angle so that its cutting edges remain square with the gear blank. Gear hobbing is used for making a wide variety of gears like spur gear, helical, hearing-bone, splines and gear sprockets, etc.
Figure 14. (a) Schematic illustration of gear cutting with a hob. (b) Production of worm gear through hobbing.
Three important parameters to be controlled in the process of gear hobbing are indexing movement, feed rate and angle between the axis of gear blank and gear hobbing tool (gear hob). If a helical gear is to be cut, the hob axis is set at an inclination equal to the sum of the helix angle of the hob and the helix angle of the helical gear. Proper gear arrangement is used to maintain rpm ratio of gear blank and hob.
The arms of hob are set at an inclination equal to the helix angle of the hob with the vertical axis of the blank.
The process of gear hobbing is classified into different types according to the directions of feeding the hob for gear cutting. Hobbing with Axial Feed In this process the gear hob is fed against the gear blank along the face of the blank and parallel to its axis. This is used to make spur and helical gears.
Advantages of gear hobbing process (a) Gear hobbing is a fast and continuous process so it is realized as economical process as compared to other gear generation processes. (b) Lower production cycle time, i.e. faster production rate. (c) The process has a larger variabilitys in the following of sense as compared to other gear machining processes.
(i) Capable to make wide variety of gears like spur gear, helical gears, worms, splines, sprockets, etc. (ii) Process of required indexing is quite simplified and capable to make any number of teeth with consistent accuracy of module. (iii) Harringbone gear cam be generated by gear hobbing exclusively. (iv) Wide variety of batch size can be accommodated by this process.
(d) Several gear blanks, mounted on the same arbor, can be processed simultaneously. (e) Lots of time is available to dissipate the generated heat. There is no over heating of cutting tool. Limitation of the process of gear hobbing is manufacturing of internal gears is not possible.
GEAR SHAVING
Gear shaving is a process of finishing of gear tooth by running it at very high rpm in mesh with a gear shaving tool. Tool is of a type of rack or pinion having hardened teeth provided with serrations. These serrations serve as cutting edges which do a scrapping operation on the mating faces of gear to be finished. Both are gears in mesh are pressed to make proper mating contact.
GEAR BURNISHING The gear to be finished is mounted on a vertical reciprocating shaft and it is kept in mesh with three hardened burnishing compatible gears. The burnishing gears are fed into the cut gear and revalued few revaluations in both the directions. Plastic deformation of irregularities in cold state takes place to give smooth surface of the gear.
In burnishing, a specially hardened gear is run over rough machined gear. The high forces at the tooth interface cause plastic yielding of the gear tooth surface which improves finish and work hardens the surface creating beneficial compressive residual stresses.
Gear Grinding In this operation abrasive grinding wheel of a particular shape and geometry are used for finishing of gear teeth. Gear to be finished is mounted and reciprocated under the grinding wheel. Each of the gear teeth is subjected to grinding operations this way. In grinding, a contoured grinding wheel is run over machined surface of the gear teeth using computer control.
Fig 17. (a) Grinding the flanks only, (b) Grinding root and flanks, (c) Grinding each flank separately with twin grinding wheels and (d) Pantograph dressing of the wheel
Fig 18. Finishing gears by grinding: (a) form grinding with shaped grinding wheels; (b) grinding by generating with two wheels
Grinding is used to correct the heattreatment distortion in gears hardened after roughing. Improvement in surface finish and error correction of earlier machining are added advantages. Grinding operation for gears can be done by profile grinding or form grinding as shown in figs 19. and 20.
Fig 19. (a) Maag zero pressure angle profile grinding and (b) Maag profile grinding
Lapping of a Gear
The process of lapping is used to improve surface finish of already made teeth. Gear to be lapped is run under load in mesh with cast iron toothed laps. Abrasive paste is introduced between the teeth. It is mixed with oil and made to flow through the teeth. One of the mating members (gear/ lapping tool) is reciprocated axially along with the revaluations.
HONING
It is used for super finishing of the generated gear teeth. Honing machines are generally used for this operation. The hones are rubbed against the profile generated on the gear tooth. Gear lapping and gear honing are the lost finishing operations of a gear generation process.
In the above gear finishing operations some operations are based on metal cutting by removing very small size of chips like gear shaving, gear grinding, lapping and honing and some other operations like gear burnishing, roll finishing and based on finishing by plastic deformation of metal.
The spiral cutter is basically a face-milling cutter that has a number of straight-sided cutting blades protruding from its periphery.
Figure 22. (a) Cutting a straight bevel-gear blank with two cutter. (b) Cutting a helical bevel gear
Fig 23: (a) Cutting a straight bevel-gear blank with two cutters. (b) Cutting a spiral bevel gear with a single cutter.
Figure 24. Gear manufacturing cost as a function of gear quality. The numbers along the vertical lines indicate tolerances