Manufacturing Process for a Face Gear Drive With Local Bearing Contact and Controllable Unloaded Meshing Performance Based on Ease-Off Surface Modification

A manufacturing process for fabricating ease-off surfaces of a face gear drive that is provided with controllable unloaded meshing performance and local bearing contact is proposed. In order to control the unloaded meshing performance, a predesigned transmission error, a predesigned contact path, and the length of contact ellipse are applied in the redesign of the ease-off surfaces of the pinion and face gear. A method of point contact between the grinding disk and the manufactured pinion is proposed to generate the pinion's ease-off surface, the grinding disk is driven by a series of parabolic motions. Numerical examples are used to illustrate the application of the proposed method, the proposed method is proven to be feasible, and the redesigned face gear is proven to be able reproduce the predesigned unloaded meshing performance simulated by tooth contact analysis (TCA). The influence of misalignment on unloaded meshing performance is also analyzed.