A finishing method for the continuous generation of spur face gears with shaving cutters

Face gear drives have been widely applied in power transmission, but the finishing of continuous generation is a difficult problem. This is mainly because the teeth of face gears are on a plane, which leads to interference by worm grinding. Hence, a shaving method for face gears is proposed in this paper. This work studies the theory of face gear shaving, the causes of mid-concave phenomena based on load tooth contact analysis (LTCA), a solution for the modification coefficient of the shaving cutter and a control method for the cutter location point. The experimental results show that the maximum machining error is −12.7μm, that many generating lines appear and that the residual stress increases by 49.2% in comparison with that of the grinding tooth surface. The present study suggests that the shaving method for spur face gears can not only achieve the finishing of continuous generation but also improve the surface integrity of the gear.