Pinion development of face-milled spiral bevel and hypoid gears based on contact attributes

This paper proposes a pinion development approach in order to obtain excellent transmission performance of the face-milled spiral bevel and hypoid gears. First, the flank form of the gear pair is determined based on the original designed ease-off topography by adjusting the contact attributes. After the gear pair is finished and measured, the deviation sum can be established by converting the wheel flank deviations into the equivalent pinion flank deviations. Then, the real ease-off topography is obtained, which is an important indicator to evaluate the transmission performance. Next, the real ease-off topography is redesigned with the target of the original designed ease-off topography to compensate the deviation sum by readjusting the contact attributes. Thus, the pinion flank form is redesigned and the corresponding machine-tool settings can be calculated by the active design method. According to which, the pinion is recut/reground and the wheel remains unchanged. Finally, the approach is conducted on a face-milled hypoid gear pair to demonstrate its effectiveness.