Tooth contact analysis on face gears with arcuate tooth

To improve tooth strength and make tooth grinding implement for face gear, a new generating method of face gear drive has been proposed, and the meshing characteristics are investigated. First, the tooth surface of imaginary gear is formed by a rotary cutting surface of cutter head with a tilted angle. The meshing process of the imaginary gear and manufactured gear is simulated, and the tooth surface mathematics model of face gear drive has been deduced. Then the tooth contact analysis model which considers the assemble errors is established under the conditions of continuous tangency of two contact surfaces. The computerized simulation of meshing and contact shows that, the machine settings of initial tilted angle, the number of imaginary tooth, cutter head radius and the vectors of assembly errors have a significant effect on the contact path and contact ellipse. The concave and convex of face gear tooth surface benefits gear strength, and the grinding process can be conducted on the general wheel and numerical control machine.