Computer aided spherical gear design and manufacturing

In this study a new kind of spherical gear mechanism which has double degree of freedom, designed, manufactured and its wearing characteristics have been investigated. The developed spherical gear can transfer motion and power on defined different working angles, so it can be used on the driven gear mechanism and mechanical joints which can works different axis like flexible wrist of robotic mechanism.Designed spherical gear model generated by using the classical gear formulation. The model has 18 teeth and it can works different axis between 0-50 degree. All the modeling and analysis activities have been done by SolidWorks Computer Aided Design (CAD) and CosmosWorks Analysis software system on computer. Spherical gear model manufactured by using MasterCAM Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software on computer, firstly by plastic material on CNC Router machine and then manufactured by AISI 1060 material on CNC Milling machine.Manufactured gear couples, experimentally performed at 1300 rpm, one-hour intervals for five hours in total. After the testing, the wearing test results obtained by measuring the mass defect on the gears and the wearing deformation were investigated which have been on the tooth surface. According to the results, adhesive and fatigue wear mechanisms were observed in the contact area of gear teeth surface. The maximum quantity of wear was obtained at the biggest working angle.