A study of the optimum configuration of injection molded plastic gear by modification of gear tooth

Abstract

In this study, the gear system is optimized by modifying the tooth configuration of the plastic gears. Plastic gear is widely used as a machine element in industries of electric and electronic parts, automotive parts etc. Unlike the steel gear, the plastic gear has low load- transmission, durability and reliability. On the other hand, it is light-weight, low-noise, operable without a lubricant, shock absorptive, and anti-corrosive. The gear characteristics are calculated and analyzed by Hexagon and FEM (Finite Element Method) tools, and the characteristics of the standard gear and the addendum modified gear of the steel gear and the plastic gear are compared. When torque is applied to these gear systems, the system using the addendum modified gear can realize soft contact between gears. So, the noise of the addendum modified gear system was less than that of the common normal gear system. However, this is not applicable to any material, such as steel which is governed by DIN (Deuteshe Industrie Norm) recommendation. This study adopted the narrow tip tooth plastic gear, and proposed the optimum addendum modified gear with respect to stress, noise and contact ratio. To calculate and analyze the simulation of gear matching, we used commercial tools like CATIA, Auto-CAD, MARC for simulation and Hexagon for calculation.