LECTURE – 5 GEAR MANUFACTURING

Contents of the lecture

Gear manufacture can be divided into two categories, forming and machining. Forming
consists of direct casting, molding, drawing, or extrusion of tooth forms in molten, powdered,
or heat softened materials. Machining involves roughing and finishing operations.

FORMING GEAR TEETH:

Characteristics: In all tooth-forming operations, the teeth on the gear are formed all at once
from a mold or die into which the tooth shapes have been machined. The accuracy of the
teeth is entirely dependent on the quality of the die or mold and in general is much less than
that can be obtained from roughing or finishing methods.
Most of these methods have high tooling costs, making them suitable only for high production
quantities .
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, ceramics
The process is confined to large gears that are machined later to required accuracy.
DIE-CASTING

Characteristics :
• Better surface finish and accuracy (tooth spacing and concentricity)
• High tooling costs
• Suited for large scale production Applications:
Instruments, cameras, business machines,
washing machines, gear pumps, small
speed reducers, and lawn movers.

Materials:
Zinc, aluminium and brass

The gears made from this process are

not used for high speeds and heavy
tooth loading. Normally applied for small
size gears.

INVESTMENT CASTING OR LOST WAX PROCESS

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.
• The process is used only if no other process is suitable since production cost is high.

Wire twister stellite gear which mates with a rack made by IC. Complicated shape makes it
economical to produce by investment casting process.

SINTERING OR P/M PROCESS

P/M OR SINTERED GEARS

Characteristics
• Accuracy similar to die-cast gears
• Material properties can be Tailor made
• Typically suited for small sized gears
• Economical for large lot size only

Secondary machining is not required.

Cluster gears, different types of gears can be combined and keyways can be built-in.

Helical gears and combination of gears

 Helical gears and combination of gears

Material utilization is more than 95%

P/M GEAR PRODUCTION BY HOT FORGING PROCESS

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.

IM gears are used in cameras , projectors, wind shield wipers, speedometer, lawn sprinklers,
washing machine,
Materials: Nylon, cellulose acetate, polysteren, poly imide
Phenolics.
IM camera gears

COMPRESSION MOULDED GEAR

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. Results in good surface finish with clean
edges and pore free dense structure with higher strength

Aluminum, Copper, Naval brass, architect-ural bronze, phosphor bronze are commonly
extruded.
Applications:
Splined hollow & solid shafts, sector gears
Stages in extrusion of a gear

Helical gear made by extrusion

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.
STAMPING
STAMPING: Sheet metal can be stamped with tooth shapes to form low precision gears at
low cost in high quantities. Surface finish and accuracy are poor.
Uses:
Toy gears, hand operated machine gears, slow speed mechanism

Precision stamping:
The dies are made of higher precision with close tolerances. The stamped gears will not
have burrs.
Uses:
Clock gears, watch gears etc.

Forging of Gears
MACHINING
The bulk of power transmitting metal gears of machinery are produced by machining process
from cast, forged, or hot rolled blanks.
VARIOUS GEAR CUTTERS

Roughing processes include milling the tooth shape with formed cutters or Generating the
shape with a rack cutter, a shaping cutter or a hob cutter.

Despite its name, the roughing processes actually produce a smooth and accurate gear tooth.
Only for high precision and quiet running, the secondary finishing operation is justified at
added cost.

GEAR SHAPING

GEAR SHAPING used a cutting tool in the shape of a gear which is reciprocated axially
across the gear blank to cut the teeth while the blank rotates around the shaper tool. It is a
true shape-generation process in that the gear-shaped tool cuts itself into mesh with the gear
blank.

The bulk of power transmitting metal gears of machinery are produced by machining process
from cast, forged, or hot rolled blanks. Roughing processes include milling the tooth shape
with formed cutters or generating the shape with a rack cutter, a shaping cutter or a hob
cutter.

ROUGHING PROCESSES

FORM MILLING BY DISC CUTTER

The disc cutter shape conforms to the gear tooth space. Each gear needs separate cutter.
However, with 8 to 10 Std. 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.
FORM MILLING BY END MILL CUTTER

The end mill cutter shape conforms to tooth spacing. Each tooth is cut at a time and then
indexed for next Tooth space for cutting. A set of 10 cutters will do for 12 to 120 teeth gears.
Suited for small volume production of low precision gears.

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 the
roughing methods.

RACK GENERATION
In rack cutter the tooth shape is trapezoid and can be made easily. The hardened and
sharpened rack is reciprocated along the axis of the gear blank and fed into it while gear
blank is being rotated so as to generate the involute tooth on the gear blank.

The rack and gear blank must be periodically repositioned to complete the circumference.
This introduces errors in the tooth geometry making this method less accurate than shaping
and hobbing.
The process is limited to small gears since the length of the rack has to be equal to
circumference of the gear at pitch diameter.

In gear shaping, a cutting tool of the shape of a gear reciprocates axially across the gear blank
to cut the teeth while the blank rotates around the shaper tool. It is a true shape-generation
process in that the gear-shaped tool cuts itself into mesh with the gear blank.

GEAR SHAPING
The accuracy is good, but any errors in one tooth of the shaper cutter will be directly
Transferred to the gear. Internal gears can be cut with this method as well.

HOBBING
Hob teeth are shaped to match the tooth space and are interrupted with grooves to provide
cutting surfaces. It rotates about an axis normal to that of the gear blank, cutting into the
rotating blank to generate the teeth.
It is the most accurate of the roughing processes since no repositioning of tool or blank is
required and each tooth is cut by multiple hob-teeth, averaging out any tool errors. Excellent
surface finish is achieved by this method and it is widely used for production of gears.

FINISHING PROCESSES
When high precision is required secondary operation can be performed to gears made by any
of the above roughing methods. Finishing operations typically removes little or no material
but improves dimensional accuracy, surface finish, and or hardness.

SHAVING
Shaving is similar to gear shaping, but uses accurate shaving tools to remove small amounts of
material from a roughed gear to correct profile errors and improve surface finish.
GRINDING
In grinding, a contoured
grinding wheel is run
over machined surface
of the gear teeth using
computer control. With
a small amount of metal
removal high surface
finish is obtained.