Enhanced Approach for Application of Longitudinal Plunging in Manufacturing of Spur Gear Drives

This paper represents an enhanced approach for application of longitudinal plunging in the manufacturing process of spur gear drives in order to localize the bearing contact. The proposed approach is based on application of a grinding disk performing a planar curvilinear trajectory. The main innovation is the tilt of the plane containing the curvilinear trajectory performed by the center of the grinding disk. The proposed manufacturing process allows the following improvements to be obtained: (i) uniform length of the major axes of the instantaneous contact ellipses all over the path of contact, (ii) reduced sensitivity of the shift of the path of contact to errors of alignment, and (iii) reduced level of contact and bending stresses. Numerical examples of design are represented.