Tooth Surface Error Correction for Face-Hobbed Hypoid Gears

Face-hobbing is a continuous generating process employed in manufacturing spiral bevel and hypoid gears. Due to machining dynamics and tolerances of machine tools, the exact tooth surface geometry may not be obtained from the machining process using theoretical machine tool settings. Repeatable tooth surface geometric errors may be observed. The tooth surface errors will cause unfavorable displacement of tooth contact and increased transmission errors, resulting in noisy operation and premature failure due to edge contact and highly concentrated stresses. In order to eliminate the tooth surface errors and ensure precision products, a corrective machine setting technique is employed to modify the theoretical machine tool settings, compensating for the surface errors. This paper describes a method of correcting tooth surface errors for spiral bevel and hypoid gears generated by the face-hobbing process using computer numerically controlled hypoid gear generators. Polynomial representation of the universal motions of machine tool settings is considered. The corrective universal motion coefficients are determined through an optimization process with the target of minimization of the tooth surface errors. The sensitivity of the changes of the tooth surface geometry to the changes of universal motion coefficients is investigated. A numerical example of a face-hobbed hypoid pinion is presented.