Meshing equation, tooth contact analysis, stress analysis and manufacture of a point-contact gear formed by double-arc milling cutter

The processing and design of point-contact gears have attracted the interest of many scholars. The point-contact gears are usually processed by specialized machines (face-milling and face-hobbing) or five-axes machines (forming milling). In this paper, a new type of point-contact gear formed by double-arc milling cutter on four-axes machine is proposed. Firstly, the meshing equation is proposed to obtain a pair of processing traces that satisfy the law of gearing, and the processing traces are also contact traces. Considering the important role of traces in obtaining the proposed gear, this gear is called as TG. Then, six pairs of contact traces for parallel-axes, crossing-axes, and skewing-axes TGs are solved. Furthermore, the tooth surface models are studied and the obtained models are used for tooth contact analysis and stress analysis, and then the instantaneous contact areas, the contact stresses, and transmission errors are obtained, respectively. Lastly, the TG pair with cross-axes is processed, and then, the measurement and rolling experiments are conducted. The obtained results indicate the meshing equation, tooth surface models, and milling method are feasible. The proposed milling method provides a new way for flexible and diversified manufacturing of point-contact gears.