Meshing performance investigations on a novel end-face roller enveloping cylindrical worm drive with non-backlash

Abstract

Due to the characteristic of high efficiency and accuracy, roller enveloping hourglass worm drive is widely applied in the robot joints and CNC machine tools, but it's sensitive to the assembly errors. A novel end-face roller enveloping cylindrical worm drive with non-backlash and low error sensitivity is proposed, and an analysis method of corrected angle is presented to improve the analysis accuracy of transmission error. Based on meshing theory, the mathematical model of roller enveloping cylindrical worm drive and it with assembly errors are established, the effects of meshing performance with different design parameters are studied. The error sensitivity is analyzed, and the solution process for the corrected rotation angle is presented. The simulated transmission errors are presented to verify the feasibility of the corrected angle analysis method. Results show that this novel worm drive remains high transmission accuracy with center distance errors, but the worm axial errors and intersection angle errors have great influence on the transmission error.