Non-circular gear continuous generating machining interpolation method and experimental research

Abstract

Current non-circular gear manufacturing process all use discrete machining method, which generates a large number of small line segments, brings in approximate error, and leads to high-order discontinuity of the whole tool path curve. The tooth surface quality will be decreased significantly due to the vibration of machining tool caused by the discontinuity of machine tool motion trajectory especially in high-speed machining. In addition, the processing speed and efficiency will be limited due to the unsmooth kinematics profile. This paper proposes a non-circular gear completely continuous generating machining interpolation method. The non-circular gear machining electronic gearbox is developed to compute the real-time interpolation point data to guarantee the strict generating motion relationship between the workpiece spindle, feed shaft, and cutter spindle during the gear manufacturing process according to the derived linkage model for non-circular gear hobbing and generate continuous smooth machining trajectory. The proposed interpolation method is implemented on the self-developed CNC system based on the embedded CNC system hardware structure platform and verified experimentally on a gear hobbing machine. A pair of two-order oval non-circular gear is machined, and the roll and application experiments on a kind of gear pumps are done to illustrate the machining performance and provide a high efficiency and precision machining method for non-circular gear.