A genuine face milling cutter geometric model for spiral bevel and hypoid gears

Accurate tooth surface and good surface quality are critical to achieve the low-noise bevel gear drives. Face milling, traditionally works as tooth roughing process, can now possibly be used for finishing process because its high speed can produce good tooth surface quality. But with the previous simplified cutter geometric model in tooth modeling, the high accurate tooth surface cannot be obtained. In this paper, a genuine face milling cutter geometric model for spiral bevel and hypoid gears is proposed. This model exactly matches with the cutter geometry in the industrial application when not considering the fabrication tolerances and tool wear . In the modeling, the blades of the genuine cutter are parameterized with blade angle, rake angles, and relief angles. The side and circular cutting edges of blades are represented on the blade rake plane, rather than the normal plane as the simplified cutter geometry. The mathematic model of the genuine tool profiles on the normal plane is derived. It can be conveniently used by the existing tooth modeling program and easily customized by specifying the geometric parameters. In comparison with the genuine tool profile with the simplified tool profile, the big geometric errors of the simplified blade profile are founded, which proves that the genuine cutter geometric model is correct and essential.