Active design of face gear drive for modifying ease-off topology flank

A method to redesign ease-off topology surfaces of pinion and face gear with given meshing performance was proposed to improve the meshing performances of face gear drives with small number of machining parameters. The face gear could be manufactured through shaping, and the pre-designed transmission errors could determine the relationship between the rotation angle of the shaper and the rotation angle of the face gear, thereby forming ease-off topology flank of the face gear. And then the ease-off topology flank of the pinion was calculated according to the location and direction of the pre-designed contact path and the pre-designed size of contact ellipse; finally, a grinding method of conjugation of point contact was used to obtain the ease-off topology flank of the pinion, while the linear equations between machining parameters and calculated ease-off topology flank of the pinion were deduced. The results show that, the transmission error and contact path simulated by tooth contact analysis (TCA) were the same as the pre-designed transmission error and contact path, with the difference between the length of contact ellipse simulated by TCA and the length of pre-designed contact ellipse from 0.175 2 mm to 1.16 mm.