A Novel Harmonic Drive With Pure Involute Tooth Gear Pair

Consider commercially available “harmonic drives” or “strain wave gearings” (all patented designs). The tooth profiles of the mating pairs of teeth of the noncircular (pitch curve) flex gear and circular (pitch circle) ring gears are nearly conjugate and noninvolute. Evidently none of them offers ideal gear kinematics. In this paper, we propose a new wave generator (or cam) to drive flex gears of harmonic drives with fully conjugate gear pairs of purely involute profiles. The cam profile is made of circular arcs at the two diametrically opposite contact zones and shifted elliptical curves for the other two zones. The geometric construction is done in such a way that tip interference is properly avoided for both engagement and disengagement with nominally stubbed or full depth tooth involute gears. We develop the theory of geometric and gearing conditions. We have also built a physical model in order to verify the geometry of tooth interference and other relevant gearing kinematics.