Evaluation of a high-precision gear measuring machine for helix measurement using helix and wedge artifacts

Abstract

High-precision gears are required for advanced motion and power transmission. The reliability of the measured value becomes important as the gear accuracy increases, and the establishment of a traceability system is needed. Therefore, a high-precision gear measuring machine (GMM) with a smaller uncertainty is expected to improve the gear calibration uncertainty. For this purpose, we developed a prototype of a high-precision GMM that adopts a direct drive mechanism and other features. Then, the high measurement capability of the developed GMM was verified using gear artifacts. Recently, some new measurement methods using simple shapes such as spheres and planes have been proposed as standards. We have verified the tooth profile measurement using a sphere artifact and reported the results that the developed GMM had a high capability in tooth profile measurement. Therefore, we attempted to devise a new evaluation method for helix measurement using a wedge artifact (WA) whose plane was treated as the tooth flank, and the high measurement capability of the developed GMM was verified. The results will provide a part of information to fully assess measurement uncertainty as our future work. This paper describes the evaluation results of the developed GMM for helix measurement using both a helix artifact and the WA, and discusses the effectiveness of the WA as a new artifact to evaluate the GMMs.