Laser texturing of helical and straight bevel gears to enhance finishing performance of AFF process

Abstract

Abrasive flow finishing (AFF) is an advanced finished process which finds many applications for nano-finishing of many industrial components, but it has many disadvantages which restrict its applications. While finishing the gears, it creates a lay pattern which is along the lay already generated by a gear machining process. This deteriorates performance and service life of the AFF finished gears. This paper reports on laser texturing of flank surfaces of helical and straight bevel gears to enhance finishing performance of AFF process. Fiber laser of 1064 nm wavelength was used to create homothetic texture across the lay profile generated by gear manufacturing process on flank surface of helical and straight bevel gears using identified optimum combination of focal length, laser power, and number of passes. Laser textured and untextured and helical and straight bevel gears were finished by AFF for different values of the finishing time and using previously optimized values of AFF process parameters. Enhancement in finishing performance of AFF was assessed by comparing microgeometry errors, surface roughness, morphology, microhardness, and wear characteristics of the laser textured helical and straight bevel gears with that of the untextured gears. It revealed that laser texturing helped AFF in enhancing microhardness, wear resistance, material removal rate, and percentage reductions in microgeometry errors and surface roughness of the textured gears than the untextured gears. Surface morphology of AFF finished laser textured gears was smoother than the corresponding untextured gears. This study proves that laser texturing is an effective, simple, and economical method to enhance performance of AFF for finishing different types of gears without any modifications in the existing system.