Gear Flank Modification Using a Variable Lead Grinding Worm Method on a Computer Numerical Control Gear Grinding Machine

Tooth crowning of a ground helical gear is usually done by adjusting the radial feed with respect to the axial feed of the grinding worm on the modern CNC gear grinding machine. However, when the amount of crowning and the helical angle of the gear are large, this method always results in a twisted tooth flank. Hence, in this paper, we propose a tooth flank crowning method for helical gears, which uses a diagonal (combined tangential and axial) feed on a grinding machine with a variable lead grinding worm (VLGW) obtained by adjusting the axial feed of the dressing disk with respect to the rotation angle of the grinding worm. Since all the required corrective motions for the proposed VLGW method are existing CNC controlled axes on modern gear grinding machines, it can easily be implemented without extra cost to modify the grinder hardware. Three numerical examples are presented to show the validation of the proposed method and its ability to reduce tooth flank twist even in the case of a large helical angle, with a particularly significant reduction on a crowned helical gear.