Modeling and experiment of grinding wheel axial profiles based on gear hobs

Hobbing is one of the crucial gear manufacturing processes with high precision and high efficiency. In order to improve the accuracy of hobbing and hob relief grinding, more precise grinding wheels are demanded for relief grinding in the production of gear hobs. In this paper, a new and accurate mathematical method for calculating the axial profile of grinding wheel based on the corresponding gear hob to be ground is proposed. Considering that most researches have been conducted to focus on the optimization of hob geometric feature and only can be applied to a specific type of hand of helix and rake angle of gear hobs. The method in this paper can be served as a general algorithm for generating axial profile of grinding wheels on the basis of the spatial envelope theory, the principle of coordinate system transformation, and studies on normal profile of single-tooth. The accuracy of grinding hobs is based on applying the approach in practical manufacturing. Taking two typical different kinds of pre-grinding gear hobs as examples for calculation and experiment, the results of tooth profile errors strengthen the position that the validity and feasibility of this method, it can be employed for gear hob design and grinding processing.