Influence of the tool profile on the wear behaviour in gear hobbing

Being the dominating green manufacturing technique to create external gears gear hobbing is of major industrial importance. The technology is characterized by a simultaneous superposition of kinematics and tool profile. Even though these tool profiles are standardized, in industries they are regularly being altered to fit the gear designer's demands regarding strength and contact ratio. Cutting gears with these modified and partly extreme tool profiles some geometries show critical wear behaviour. Despite existing experience-based knowledge, no systematic knowledge base is available. Therefore, this paper summarizes geometrical influences of the tool profile on the wear mechanisms. A variety of different tool profiles and gear geometries were tested within the fly cutting analogy test. The effects were also studied by means of FEM-simulation and interpenetration simulation. Finally, the wear phenomena were matched with load parameters. (C) 2016 CIRP.