A novel 3D, full-field optical method for measuring gears

With the aim of solving the problems of high cost, complex maintenance, and low efficiency of existing gear detection technology, a new three-dimensional (3D) full-field optical measurement method for gears is proposed. As an example, the method is verified in the measurement of the 3D error of the gear surface and the gear parameter error of a non-standard right-hand helical gear with a modulus of 1.75 and a number of teeth of 21. The gear accuracy standard GB/T 10095.1-2008 is used to analyze and evaluate the surface 3D error and parameter error measurement results. Based on the results of error analysis, the gear manufacturing improvement measures are analysed and fed back to the gear manufacturing system to realise closed-loop gear processing control and detection in order to produce gear products with higher precision. Our experimental results show that the proposed method can be used to measure the 3D errors at the surface in the X, Y, and Z directions and the parameter errors. The minimum surface error of the gear in the Z-direction of the keyway is −7.24162E-06mm, and the pitch error reaches the allowable value of deviation for a grade 8 precision gear, as set out in the GB/T 10095.1–2008 accuracy standard. A verification process is carried out to show that our method can meet the requirements of modern industrial intermediate precision gear testing.