Project: Manufacturing Transport Transmissions by Economical and Reliable Gear Honing Processes
To be competitive in the global market the manufacturing industry in high wage countries has to develop their manufacturing chain continuously. To exploit cost saving potentials, existing manufacturing technologies have to be optimised or be substituted by more effi-cient technologies. _x000D_Gears with high geometrical requirements have to be hard finished after heat treatment. In many cases, gear honing represents a cost-efficient hard finishing process for automotive gear manufacturers. Gear honing is a hard finishing process with geometrically undefined cutting edge where an external toothed gear is in contact with an internal toothed honing tool._x000D_An advantage of gear honing is the generation of a surface structure on the tooth flank which reduces the noise emission of the gear. An additional advantage of honed gears is the resulting high residual compressive stress, which leads to a longer lifetime of the gears. Furthermore unlike all other hard finishing processes honing needs no environmen-tally harmful testing methods for detecting grinding burn like nital etching, because grind-ing burn is not likely to arise during the honing process. This is due to the low cutting speeds and contact times in honing. Due to these advantages gear honing is nowadays an established process for hard finishing of automotive gears. The request of the industry now is to transfer these advantages to the hard finishing of larger gears for trucks, buses and wind mills._x000D_Although honing machines are designed for honing gears with a tip diameter of up to da = 280 mm, the hard finishing of gears with a tip diameter larger than da = 150 mm by means of gear honing is actually not very common in industrial context. Due to the geo-metrical contact relationship between honing tool and gear work piece, the manufacturing terms and conditions during honing larger gears are unfavourable compared with honing automotive gears. Gears with a tip diameter of more than 150 mm have larger stock varia-tions, lower cutting speeds and large contact areas in comparison to automotive gears. Due to this higher manufacturing forces are needed which lead to higher dynamic excita-tion. Thereby establishing a robust manufacturing process is difficult and the required quality is not always achieved in a reliable way. So far, there are no systematic studies dealing with honing of gears larger than da = 150 mm and there are missing specific val-ues which complicate honing large gears. Additionally until now there is no “in-situ meas-urement control strategy” developed, which would enable to reduce quality control efforts within the hard finishing process chain significantly._x000D_The aim of this project is to increase the economic efficiency of honing large gears by improving the intrumentation and the control system of the machine tool and by developing new honing and dressing tool specifications. The results will be provided in a for gear processes innovative knowledge and decision tool to optimise the design of honing processes. For this purpose a knowledge base for the decision model has do be generated through geometrical calculations and systematical experimental investigations in honing large gears based on new specific values.
| Acronym | MATTERHON (Reference Number: 5681) |
| Duration | 01/08/2010 - 31/12/2013 |
| Project Topic | The aim of this project is to increase the economic efficiency of machining larger gears by honing them reliably. Therefore the control system of the machine tool have to be improved and new tool specifiacations have to be found. The results will be provided in a knowledge and decision tool. |
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Project Results (after finalisation) |
Agco Power CO target in the project was to supply test parts to Fässler to develop current honing machine. Original plan (role of Agco) was changed during the project due to time challenges. Agco supplied parts to honing test and get a feedback regarding the honing process and improved parameters._x000D_CO results was that there is improvement possibilities by new generation honing machine, but those features could not be implemented to Agco old machine. |
| Network | Eurostars |
| Call | Eurostars Cut-Off 4 |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | AGCO SISU POWER Inc. | Partner | Finland |
| 7 | Artis Gesellschaft für angewandte Messtechnik mbH | Partner | Germany |
| 7 | Breu Diamantwerkzeug GmbH | Partner | Switzerland |
| 7 | Fässler AG | Coordinator | Switzerland |
| 7 | Grindaix GmbH | Partner | Germany |
| 7 | RWTH Aachen University | Partner | Germany |
| 7 | Scania CV AB | Partner | Sweden |