Gear Lapping 1

[mfgenggear]

Anyone have recommendation for a vendor that does gear lapping in the U.S. or maybe in California.

Thanks

Mfgenggear
if it can be built it can be calculated.
if it can be calculated it can be built.

 

[mfgenggear]

just to add lapping of the spur gear tooth profile such as honing.

Mfgenggear
if it can be built it can be calculated.
if it can be calculated it can be built.

 

[TVP]

AA Gear in Ann Arbor, MI has a Fassler machine for honing:

http://www.aa-gear.com/gear_honing_equipment.html

Other possibilities:

http://www.geartechnology.com/directory/Gear_Lapping_Services.htm

 

[mfgenggear]

how about the old style gear lapping?

Mfgenggear
if it can be built it can be calculated.
if it can be calculated it can be built.

 

[tbuelna]

mfgenggear-

When you say "old style gear lapping" do you mean a machine that actually laps mating sets of gears? Or do you mean the type of machine that laps single gears against a master?

Years ago, lapping mating pairs of gears was the most practical method of obtaining high precision mesh contacts. But with the advent of highly accurate CNC gear grinders, rotary honing machines, ultra-precise in-process dimensional probing systems, surface improvement processes like ISF, and the ability to accurately predict the amount of correction/compensation required in a given gear geometry using digital FEA/FEM tools, there is no longer much need for lapping of mating gears to achieve precision contacts.

There are still a few aerospace gear houses left in southern California that maintain the older types of machines used to produce very high quality gear sets, as well as having the experienced operators that know how to run these machines. You might try GMI in Anaheim, or G&N Rubicon in Santa Ana.

Good luck.
Terry

 

[dinjin]

I thought lapping was to improve surface finish and not
necessarily better accurary and also to remove burrs at
the tips and provide a very small radius at the tips.

 

[CoryPad]

dinjin,

Lapping does improve surface finish and removes surface irregularities from heat treatment, but the traditional reason to select it is to create matched gearsets for accurate mesh contact. It is still used widely in the automotive industry for hypoid gearsets for axle applications.

 

[mfgenggear]

Hey Guys I been very busy, so I was not able to respond rapidly.

Terry

thank you for the suggestions.
lapping of the old traditional in my mind is still a very cheap & feasible system.


TVP
thank you also for your suggestion


thank you all



Mfgenggear
if it can be built it can be calculated.
if it can be calculated it can be built.

 

[tbuelna]

I thought lapping was to improve surface finish and not
necessarily better accurary and also to remove burrs at
the tips and provide a very small radius at the tips.

There are several ways to improve the surface finish of the tooth active profile surfaces, including honing, lapping, or ISF. A process like rotary honing will not improve accuracy, but it will improve surface finish of the active profile, it will produce a gear with more uniform tooth indexing and profile, and it can add small amounts of lead correction or face crown.

Tooth edge and tip radii are usually produced with dedicated machines. Lapping or honing will only modify the tooth active profile surfaces, leaving the flank surfaces beyond the SAP/EAP unaffected.

The benefit to using the "traditional" method of lapping described by mfgenggear is that this finishing process potentially produces gear pairs with near-perfect contact geometry in operation. The downside is that the process can be very expensive and time-consuming for anything besides small quantities.

 

[CoryPad]

Of course each application has its own trade offs, but lapping is the low-cost option to make millions of matched automotive hypoid gearsets.

 

[Tmoose]

I always figured that lapping passenger car gearsets was going to only effectively simulate low loading/small deflections, although relatively speaking that is probably where most driving is done.

Some troublesome industrial gearboxes we dealt with a couple of years back were adjusted at assembly and lapped at idle and no load, so I was not surprised when transmitting full rated 50 HP the contact was "different."

 

[CoryPad]

It is true that contact pattern can change when the forces are higher. The gear geometry can be designed to compensate for this.