Manufacturing bevel gears
A method of manufacturing bevel gears with a tool, such as a tapered milling tool ( 16 ), wherein the tool is located at a position offset (R w ) from the center position of a conventional face milling cutter and the tool follows a path, such as a circular arc path, during machining.
1. A method of producing a bevel gear with a tool to be brought into engagement with a workpiece and being rotatable about a tool axis of a metal removing machine having a plurality of machine axes, said metal removing machine being a CNC free-form bevel gear machine or a CNC milling machine comprising five axes, said method comprising:
defining a face mill cutter center position of a conventional cutting machine setup;
repositioning the tool from said face mill cutter center position to an offset tool position such that the tool axis is coincident with, or orientated at an angle to, a reference profile center line of a tooth slot to be produced;
rotating said tool and bringing said tool into engagement with a workpiece;
providing relative movement between said tool and said workpiece to traverse said tool along the face width of said workpiece in a plurality of passes to progressively form a tooth slot wherein said tool follows a circular arc in each of said passes.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said tool is a tapered milling tool.
3. The method of claim 2 wherein said angle is zero degrees.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein prior to each of said passes, the tool and workpiece are positioned relative to one another in a different generating roll position.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein said plurality of passes are carried out simultaneously with a continuous generating roll motion defined by continuous relative positioning of said tool and workpiece.
6. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
rotating said workpiece in a timed relationship with the speed of the traversal of the tool along the face width of the workpiece.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein said tool is a cylindrical shaped tool.
8. The method of claim 1 wherein said tool is a peripheral tool.
9. The method of claim 1 wherein said tool is a cutting tool.
10. The method of claim 1 wherein said tool is a grinding tool.
11. The method of claim 1 wherein said angle is the range of 0 degrees to −90 degrees.
12. The method of claim 1 wherein the offset tool position is located at the center of the tooth face width of the workpiece.
13. The method of claim 1 wherein each of said passes comprises traversal of the tool along the face width of the workpiece in a forth and back direction.
14. The method of claim 1 wherein the formed tooth slot is identical with a tooth slot formed by a face mill cutter positioned at said face mill cutter center position of a conventional cutting machine setup.