Reduction of Sensitivity of Spiral Bevel Gears to Misalignments by the Use of Appropriate Machine Tool Settings

The method for loaded tooth contact analysis is applied for the investigation of the combined influence of machine tool settings for pinion teeth finishing and misalignments of the mating members on load distribution and transmission errors in mismatched spiral bevel gears. By using the corresponding computer program the influence of pinion’s offset and axial adjustment error, angular position error of the pinion axis, tooth spacing error, and machine tool setting variation for pinion teeth finishing, on tooth contact pressure, tooth root stresses and angular displacement of the driven gear member from the theoretically exact position based on the ratio of the numbers of teeth is investigated. The obtained results show that by the use of appropriate machine tool settings the influence of misalignments and tooth errors on maximum tooth contact pressure and transmission errors can be significantly reduced.