Research on technology of twin rollers rotary forging of spiral bevel gears

To investigate the technology of twin rollers rotary forging of spiral bevel gears, three different models, which are the open die, the closed die and the floating die model, were designed to rotary forge a big spiral bevel gear whose external diameter is 246 mm. The effects of the spiral bevel gears that formed in the three models were analysed by three-dimensional finite element method under the commercial software DEFORM 3D. Finally, experiments have been carried out on a 20CrMnTi gear billet to compare the numerical results. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental ones and demonstrate that the floating die is the optimal model to rotary forge the spiral bevel gear, the microstructure of the gear that formed by rotary forging is refined well, and the microhardness reaches 457.8 HV (an increase of 110.0 HV) compared with the gear that formed by machining. These results provided a scientific basis for actual production of the spiral bevel gear.