Process concepts for gear finish hobbing

In the process chain for gear manufacturing, gear hobbing is one of the most productive processes for soft machining of gears. To reach a high quality after the soft machining, for example in gear finish hobbing, the requirements on the hobbing process increases significantly. To get a high quality part after soft machining, the process of gear hobbing is mostly divided in a roughing and a finishing cut. In the roughing process, the most amount of the material needs to get machined. The finishing process is used to get a high quality shape of the gear and to get low surface roughness. To get low cutting forces in the finishing step, the material stock after the roughing process has to be minimized. A low amount of stock on the flank offers the possibility to use high cutting speeds. This paper deals with the investigation of the two cut processes in the gear hobbing. Especially, the tool life of different tool concepts are taken into account. The process design offers the opportunity to use the same tool for the roughing and the finishing cut or the choice of different tools. Using different tools, a special tool design for the finishing step would be possible. A comparison between these two concepts is the focus of the investigation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).