Gianfranco Bianco Gear hobbingPrinting date december 2004 NNovaprint, Bologna + General comments + Nomenclature of the parts of a hob + Normal and axial pitches = Normal and axial pressure angles Helix angle + Gashes + Number of gashes + Cutting face «Tip and side relief + Outside diameter “Total length of hob + Centring bore: *Collars and side faces “Tooth profile + Profile calculation + Normal profile +The interference problem + Hobs with lowered pressure angles + Calculation of the semi-topping profile + Verifying the value of semi-topping + Protuberance and full radius + Multi-start hobs + Multi-gash hobs + Hob accuracy tolerances + Materials used to manufacture hob + High speed steel + Sintered metal carbides + Recoating +The CVD method+The PVD method + The electrodeposition process + Working conditions + Cutting speed + Feed and chip thickness + The Hoffmeister formula + Further considerations on chip thickness + Reducing total hobbing costs + Shifting + Setting up a hob + Considerations on workpiece errors + Cutting time and disposable hobs + Dry cutting and carbide hobs + Hob resharpening + Special profile hobs + Worm wheel hobs + Hobs for splined shafts + Hexagonal profile hobs Roller chain sprocket hobs + Fixed-position hobs + Comments on hob manufacturing + Inserted blade hobs + Anomalies in the use of hobs and solutions Problems with the hob + Problems with the gear + Key to the most common abbreviations (acronyms) sss iinvaaiagineneerennnionenastenes General comments “There are various ways of producing a gear. Itis possible, for exam- ple, to mill the vane between each tooth with a milling cutter, to form the teeth with a shaper cutter or, especially when it comes to internal teath, to broach them. Likewise gear teeth may be rolled using flat racks of round rolling dies and it is even possible to cut them by form grinding from a blank workpiece. Gear teeth can also be sintered or formed from hot or cold moulds. The choice between one method or another clerly depends on the type of gear and the type of production at hand. Itis very convenient to use a milling cutter for small batch production where the level of accuracy required is not particularly high. ‘The shaper cutter must be used when the hob is unable to aecess the geer and for blind intemal gears and it is suited to small batch production. Broaches are generally used to produce internal gear teeth, parti- cularly for medium to large batch production where good accuracy is, also required, Rolling, on the other hand, is preferable for large batch manutactu- ring of splined shafts with A'S.A. teeth or similar or for small gears, especially shat pinions. ‘The ather systems availahie tend to have rather unusual applica tions but sintering has made very good progress and its field of appli- cation has widened in recent years. ‘The hob, however, is definitely the too! that is most commonly used to manufacture gears and it also has a wide range of other applica~ tions. It is commonly used, for example, to manufacture involute profile splined shatts (particularly for large batch production) or straight-sided splined shafts for various types of chain sprockets and so on, Practically all profiles that are repeated regularly on a circumferen- ce can be generated by hobbing. Given the widespread use of this operation, efforts have cleerly been channelled towards improving the performance of tools and machine tools. In fact the continuous evolution of production equip- ‘ment has revolutionised the actual philosophy behind this operation in 3many ways over the last few decades. ‘The hob is perhaps the tool which covers the widest range in terms of dimensions; there are in fact very tiny hobs with teeth that can only be seen through @ magnifying glass and there are enormous hobs that can only be lifted by means of a hoist. It is possible to hob both the gears of a wristwatch and those used naval gearboxes or in oll-bearing systems. This book cannot deal completely and in detail with all types of hobs and all topics linked to the hod. It does, however, collect and order the basic notions that lie behind this tool and it provides the reader with a series of updated technical information on design, use and mainte- nance of the hob. Particular attention is paid to those hobs that are used for the production of small to medium sized cylindrical gears, that is those that are normally used in the Automotive Industry and by the industrial vehicle, tractor and earth moving machinery sectors. This text is therefore aimed at all engineers that are involved in the world of gears. By "engineers" the wide sense of the word is meant, that is those of you that are involved in design, in studying working methods, in overseeing production and gear tooling specialists in general, Iis not intended for the highly specialised; its aim is more modest in that it should enable whomever may need it to get an idea of what a hob is, of how it is designed and manufactured and of how it must be used. ‘Those engineers that have been working in the field of gears for some years, however, may find some of the information given useful What is @ hob? The hob is a threaded milling cutter on which teeth are created by cutting evenly spaced gashes that intersect the thread. These gashes may be parallel to the hob axis and are therefore known as straight gashes or they may be in the perpendicular direction of the thread and are called helicoidal gashes, The surface of the teeth created in this manner is generally radial and, ifthe gashes are straight, they lie on a plane which passes through the hob axis. If, however, the gashes are spiral they are usually posi- tioned on a helicoid which perpendicularly intersects the thread. Itis said that the hob can be compared to a worm and the kinematics which link the movement of the hob to that of the gear to be out are in fact the same as those which link a worm mating with a worm wheel. 4 As with @ worm, the hob too may have one or more starts, that is one or more threads. In the first case with each revolution of the hob, the gear rotates by an angle corresponding to a tooth while if a hob has 2, 3 or more starts, for each revolution of the hob itself, the gear will rotate by an arc cor responding to 2, 8 or more teeth. The hob generates the involute gear profile by a process known as “enveloping.” This means that the hob tooth flanks that follow one ano- ther to form the gear tooth profile are like many small tangent seg- ments of the profile itself. In other words these rectilinear cutting edges: ‘envelope, so to speak, the gear tooth fiank in a succession of seg- ments, thereby forming an involute arc. This concept is explained mote clearly by the classic figure No.1. which shows precisely the kinematics with which a gear tooth Is formed. anti | ' i i |A- Generating and gonorate proto This system of generation by enveloping is not just limited to involu- te profiles. It can in fact be appiied to any other profile that repeats itself regularly on a circumference apart from where undercuts are present. For example, in figure No.2 the generation of hexagons is illustra- ted. In this case the hob tooth profile has a curvilinear shape. | Itis therefore clear that there are many different types of hob. These differ in terms of the type of profile they have to generate, their dimen- sions — which cover an ineredibly vast range — how they are designed, Rot to mention the type of material from which they are made. We will therefore start by talking about hobs for the manufacture of involute cylindrical gears, first examining, however, the different parts that make up @ hob. Nomenclature of the parts of the hob In figure No.3 the different parts that make up a hob are shown. Some of these parts will be dealt with in more detail in other chapters whilst, for others, a short comment is sufficient. © Normal and axial pitches One of the parameters which distinguishes a hob is the module. In general it corresponds to the module of the gear to be out but this is not always the case. Later on we will see that it is possible to hob a gear with a certain nominal module using a hob that has a different ‘one. Basically the module of a gear and therefore that of the hob is a value which is selected in a conventional manner. The definition of a gear module is: m=Dp:Z that is the module is obtained by dividing the pitch diameter of the ear by the number of teeth. The module is therefore not an a-dimen- sional number but its measured in mili metres. This fact is often for- gotten by many,