It Is Stated Tha, T Gear Grinding

3
0
ol<i
GEAR GRINDING!
By R S DRUMMOND'
The author discusses only gear-grinding work on
gear teeth subsequent to heat-treatment and pays par-
ticular attention to automobile transmission gears.
He states that as yet very little is being done in the
grinding of gear teeth that have not been heat-treated.
The salvaging of gears that have been rejected and
the finish-grinding of gears that have grinding stock
remaining upon the teeth are commented upon, to-
gether with remarks on the cost of grinding, the his-
tory of gear grinding, the different classes of work
performed, gear-grinding machine.s in general, tooth-
furm and gear wear. It is stated tha,t gear grinding
is commercially a production operation having as its aim
the placing of the correct tooth-shape and proper sur-
face-finish on gear teeth so that the gears can move
accurately, noiselessly and without wear; and that the
cost of finished acceptable transmissions is less than
Y/hen the process of finish-grinding is used.'
. We normally grind the teeth of gears after the heat-
treatment. This paper will have particular reference to
automobile transmission gears, which constitute a very
large part of our work. Very few gears are made by
grinding teeth that have not been heat-treated. We had
experience last year with two lots of soft oil-pump gears
that were sent to us by different manufacturers as being
noisy. In hoth cases we returned the gears with the ad-
vice that they were cut very inaccurately. When they
were received by us they could hardly be forced together
on their true centers; they were soft and required only
additional backlash to provide oil clearance.
Many instruments that have been designed to show
1 Detroit Section paper.
Vice-President, Gear Grinding Machine Co., Detroit.
Downloaded from SAE International by University of Michigan, Wednesday, October 29, 2014
GEAR GRINDING 559
tooth curvature are of great assistance in securing ac-
;;urately cut soft gears, as they enable the operator to
keep a careful check on the production of the machine
that is more valuable than the current practice of rolling
gears together on studs. Accurately cut gears will be
greatly distorted by the later process of heat-treatment
which distorts the teeth so that, unless they are ground,
quiet, accurate movement is impossible.
The importance of grinding the bore and face of auto-
mobile 'gears has been well known for years, and great
progress has been made in this work. It has been cus-
tomary from time to time to finish-grind one part of
the automobile and then another after heat-treating it.
The grinding takes the ,place of the old method of finish-
machining the parts before heat-treating them and then
fitting the badly shaped parts together by touch or
measurement. Gear teeth, so far, have not been given
the same attention and poorly finished gear teeth and
distorted tooth-shapes have been assumed by some manu-
facturers to be unavoidable. We bespeak for gear
grinding your favorable consideration as being a logical
development and an accurate process.
H. J. Eberhardt recently pointed out' the progress that
has been made in the finishing of gear teeth. He showed
that during the first period of their efforts the manufac-
turers used forms and cutters made in the tooth-form,
and that many such machines listed in old catalogs had
been abandoned; that in the second period generating
machines were used to cut the teeth; and that in the
third period the cutters and the gear teeth were ground
after being hardened.
SALVAGING VERSUS FINISH-GRINDING
There are two large volumes of gear-tooth-grinding
business: first, the' salvaging of gears that have been
rejected as noisy or ill-.shaped; and, secondly, the finish-
grinding of gear teeth on which there is sufficient grind-
ing stock left to allow accurate grinding.
The bulk of gear-tooth grinding, in the years gone by,
was in the salvaging of gear parts that had been rejected
in automobile transmissions. When manufacturers had
gear trouble it was possible to take noisy gears that had
already been cut to size, and to resurface them to an
'See Mechanical Enginem'ing, AUgURt. 1921. p. G30.
560 THE SOCIETY OF AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERS
accurate tooth-form that would run quietly in a trans-
mISSIOn. A large number of the gears furnished for
salvaging were badly distorted by heat-treatment; a
smaller number were originally cut to an inaccurate
tooth-form. It is possible to grind the surface of such
gear teeth so that the tooth-form shall be true and give
quiet operation.
The grinding of salvage gears removes a certain small
amount of stock from both sides of the tooth. This stock
is from 0.003 to 0.006 in. in depth of cut and represents
an average reduction in the chordal thickness of the tooth
at the pitch circle of 0.008 in. This does not mean that
0.008 in. is removed from the entire surface of the tooth.
This 0.008 in. represents the normal maximum increase
in backlash in a given gear; such gears mated together
are increased in backlash to a maximum of 0.016 in.
Many gears salvaged in this manner require the removal
of only 0.002 or 0.003 in., the backlash being 0.004 in.
in a given gear, and 0.008 in. in a pair of such gears
mated together. The backlash introduced into the gears
when salvaged varies with the degree of inaccuracy in
the product and not by the amount of stock necessary to
be removed in the grinding operation.
A majority of mechanics and superintendents believe
that the introduction of additional backlash will cause
noise in the gears. We find that most of the noise
usually attributed to additional backl-ash can be credited
to the improper introduction of excessive backlash, as
it is customary for manufacturers to secure backlash
by pushing the cutters out of the true position, thus
misplacing the tooth-form.
We have tested a large number of transmissions with
, ground gears that had backlash as high as 0.030 in. yet
were quiet in operation, the only noi.se in the gears oc-
curring when the car surged and the car speed exceeded
the engine speed, the backlash accumulating into a single
tap as the car surged. With proper backlash. the oil-
cushion between the teeth reduces the noise due to the
surging action. Other than this single tap with each
surge of the car there is no noise, no growl, no hum,
no sing. When the car surges into second speed the back-
lash between the four gears accumulates and will cause
the single tap already mentioned, but otherwise four such
gears with a total backlash of 0.060 in. will run quietly
under normal operation.
GEAR GRINDING 561
During the last year we have salvaged for one firm
40,000 gears that were finish-cut before heat-treatment,
and 35,000 for another company. Such salvaging is usual
in the building of automobile transmissions, and this
class of work will continue to be a factor in the gear-
grinding business just so long as the attempt is made
to finish the teeth before heat-treating them.
The finish-grinding of gear teeth having grinding stock
constitutes the largest volume of gear-tooth grinding.
The gears are furnished with the teeth made to normal
machine limits, not to gear limits. These limits are
easily maintained by any method of gear-tooth cutting
and the practice is the same as is customary on so many
other standard parts of an automobile. It is usual for
.us to receive such gears rough-cut or hobbed, by a single
cut, with a variation in the tooth thickness of from 0.006
to 0.010 in. over the required size of the finished tooth.
The grinding stock, approximately 0.003 in., that is re-
moved from each side of the tooth during the grinding
operation, is usually sufficient to eliminate the distortion
due to heat-treatment. The limits of 0.006 to 0.010 in.
over the required tooth thickness allow cut-gear blanks
to be produced rapidly by the most ordinary proc.esses
of gear-cutting.
The main pinion, or sleeve-gear, in many cars is de-
signed so that the teeth on the gear mesh with the
internal teeth of the second-speed sliding-gear, and it is
desirable that these two parts fit together accurately.
When grinding these pinions it is usual for us to fit
them to their mating second-speed gear. On the main
pinion we prefer to have grinding stock of approximately
0.008 to 0.012 in. over the finished thickness of the tooth
in order that an accurate, tight fit between these parts
can be made.
The change in gear-tooth grinding from the salvaging
of misshapen teeth to the finish-grinding of new product
with grinding stock is the natural result of increased
knowledge of gear-tooth grinding. Most manufacturers
who now use grinding as the finishing operation began
by using it as a salvaging operation. They found that
the process was successful, and having been led toin-
vestigate the finish-grinding of rough teeth, they found
that the expense of the finish-grinding process was rela-
. tively small when compared with that of gears cut to
size and distorted as a result of their subsequent heat-
treatment.
562 THE SOCIE'l'Y OF AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERS
COST OF GRJNDING
The cost of the finish-grinding of roughed gears has
been proved to be less than that of the usual process
of finish-cutting, heat-treating and salvaging. In making
a comparison of costs, it is important that the overhead
expense of finish-cutting should bear the burden of the
rolling, mating, scrap loss, sizing, running-in of gears,
changing transmissions on account of noise and all other
expense items that are so prevalent in finished-gear work.
This total expense should be applied against the finishing
operation, when the cost of finishing is compared with
that of ground gears, as grinding the gears eliminates all
these items. We take gears that have been rough-
machined and heat-treated and finish-grind them to a
true tooth-form with a scrap loss that normally i3 less
than 1 per cent. We thus assume the burden of all the
above features of gear production.
Many manufacturers have found that the total cost of
a finished transmission, accepted and placed in a car, is
less when the gp.ars are finish-ground after the heat-
treatment than when they are finish-cut before the heat-
treatment. Automotive manufacturers who have handled
similar operations have changed from the old method of
selecting the product and fitting the mismated parts to
the better method of finish-grinding the parts to accurate
HISTORY OF GEAR GRINDING
Attempts at gear grinding have been numerous. Rec-
ords show that as early as 1874 a man molded a wheel
to the approximate shape of a gear tooth and used it
for cleaning the surfaces of cast gear-teeth. He found
the cast gears rather rough when they came from the
foundry, so he put a molded wheel between the teeth of
the cast gear and removed the burrs and the projections.
H. M. Leland of Detroit developed the Leland-Ferris
bevel-gear grinding machine, in which the edge of a
wheel was used against the gear tooth and the tooth
curve was generated to an approximately true curve.
This occurred about 1898. There have been many other
attempts at gear grinding. To grind gears accurately is
an art; it has been attempted by many, but has been
accomplished by few.
Our types of machine, made according to the Ward
design, are described in a subsequent paragraph. They
are illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2. We have developed a
New Text
New Text
New Text New Text
New Text
large amount of speci'al equipment for the handling of
gear-tooth grinding that has not as yet been placed on
the market. It has been our purpose to continue the
development of this equipment until we can handle the
gear-tooth grinding of all types of gear that are in .
common use .
. Gear-tooth-grinding jobs of many sorts come to us.
The large gears used on electric locomotive drives are
sent because the finish-cut gears develop so much noise
after the heat-treatment that it has been found necessary
to grind them in order that they may operate accurately
without noise and have longer life. The machining of
manganese-steel gears containing 13 per cent of man-
ganese is a difficult job and is feasible only with a
grinding wheel. We have ground the teeth of such gears
up to 20-in. face, %,-in. pitch and 3 to 4-ft. diameter.
Some of these are shown in Fig. 3. In some instances
the tooth shapes were ground out of the solid blanks.
Grinding from the blanks was thought desirable because
the distortion of the cast gear-tooth of high-manganese
steel is very large. Some of the manganese gears were
too wide for our early types of machine, but we were
able to mount the gears on an arbor, grind the faces
of the teeth in one direction, then reverse the gear on
the arbor, grind back again to the other grinding cut
and, by careful and accurate alignment, make the grind-
ing cuts meet. Airplane gears require accuracy and long
life. A large number of tractor gears are salvaged after
the heat-treatment. The distortion in such gears fre-
quently causes more noise than a tractor engine with the
muffler open. Many thousands of these gears were too
noisy for open-air use on tractors. Plain bevel gears
such as are used normally in rear axles have been ground
by us in large quantities. These types give a fair idea
of the variety of gear work that we handle commercially
and indicate the wide range of the requirements for
grinding gear teeth.
TYPES OF MACHINE
Our machines are built in either the planer or the
shaper type, the emery wheel taking the place of the
cutting tool. The shaper-type machine is shown in Fig.
2. The wheel is mounted so that its formed face passes
through the gear-tooth space, grinding both sides of the
tooth and the bottom at each cut. Gears are mounted
on this machine either singly or in groups as conditions
565
allow. Where a number of gears are mounted on an
arbor they are brought into accurate alignment, then the
wheel passes through the tooth spaces of the several
gears. After this the arbor is indexed, the wheel again
passes through the next tooth-space and the operation is
repeated around the gear.
The shape of the wheel used in grinding is accurately
formed by diamonds that scribe or cut the tooth-form on
the face of the grinding wheel. Those who have tried
to shape wheels for other purposes may find it hard to
realize that we are able to perform this operation ac-
curately and quickly. The operation of shaping the wheel
has been well standardized and brought down to a pro-
duction basis and occupies only a fraction of a minute.
We grind 150 sets of gears per day for one company and
100 sets for another firm in continuous production. The
operation of the machine is so accurate and simple that,
having completed an arbor of say eight gears, the varia-
tion in the grinding on the different gears will not be
sufficient to register on the testing apparatus.
TOOTH-FORM
Aside from the errors of distortion from heat-treat-
ment, there is probably no error that has so great an
influence on production as the variation of the tooth-form.
We have known men to hide away certain cutters that
they felt were producing gears accurately, to save them
for emergenc.y use. Recently a cut gear was sent to our
company by such a man, who stated that he had been
cutting gears successfully with the same cutter for 4
years and had saved it especially to cut more gears when
needed. He said that his recent trials had not been
successful, that the gears produced were very noisy.
After making a laboratory examination of the gear, we
found four different shapes of teeth on the gear that
were far out of true. The gear-tooth forms were high
and low. This defect was due largely to the heat-treat-
ment, but the tooth-form on the gears indicated that the
cutting was inaccurate, and that the cutter had been
improperly set in position.
It is true that many gears are cut wrong when soft,
but the percentage of finish-cut gears that pass through
peat-treatment without any distortion is really very small.
With the instruments available today, it is possible to
determine variations in gear teeth after the heat-treat-
ment. We recommend that tooth-form indicators be used.
GEAR GRINDING 567
It is a good practice to put the finishing operation on
the gear teeth after the heat-treatment; even if there is
no other reason, surely the lessened interruption to pro-
duction will have weight. A manufacturer recently de-
termined that it cost $19 to take out the transmission
from a finished car and replace the noisy gears. He was
then tearing down 50 cars per day.
GEAR WEAR
Much has been said recently concerning the wear of
gear teeth. Special steel and methods of heat-treatment
have been recommended in an effort to limit the amount
of wear. All such efforts are worthy of consideration.
Improper tooth-form causes abrupt acceleration and re-
tardation that occur at least once for every tooth-contact,
and is a large factor in tooth wear. Improperly shaped
teeth accelerate the normal wear. .
An article on the Investigation' of Tooth Wear with
Automobile Gear Steels, by E. R. Ross,' was submitted
to the American Gear Manufacturers' Association at its
October, 1921 meeting, in which much was said con-
cerning the wear of gear teeth. This article shows
where the wear starts and how it continues along the
tooth as the gears run together. After the wear starts,
it will cut into the surfaces and continue to grow along
the teeth. The rate of wear is dependent largely on
the material of which the gears are made, the method of
heat-treating them and the distortion in the tooth-form
that causes the wear.
With regard to other parts of the car, it has been
proved, as it has been for gear teeth, that properly shaped
surfaces, when finish-ground and running in oil, will last
for a long time without an objectionable amount of wear;
it has also been proved that any improper shape of the
parts and rough surfaces will cause an acceleration in
wear that makes for bad operation of the parts.
The grinding of gears is commercially a production
operation. Its aim is the placing of the correct tooth-
shape and the proper surface-finish on the gear tooth so
that the gears can move accurately, noiselessly and with-
out wear. The cost of finished acceptable transmissions
is less when finish-grinding is used. [The discussion of
this paper is printed on p. 627.]
'See A1ttomoNl'c Intlustdes, Nov. 3, 1921, p. 865.

It Is Stated Tha, T Gear Grinding

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

It Is Stated Tha, T Gear Grinding

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

It Is Stated Tha, T Gear Grinding

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

3

You might also like