Review on the Research of Polishing Technologies for Gear Tooth Profiles
Gears are the most widely used transmission parts in the modern mechanical transmission sys-tem.The precision and surface quality of gear tooth profiles have great influence on the precision,smoothness,reliability and noise of gear transmission.The machining process of gears usually goes through the process of initial cutting,heat treatment,initial grinding and fine grinding,etc.However,there are still some problems after grinding,such as grinding marks,difficulties in further reducing the surface roughness and uneven distribution of surface roughness along the tooth profile.At present,gear profile polishing after grinding is one of the effec-tive ways to solve the above problems.In this study,the main methods of tooth profile polishing are classified in-to electrochemical honing,abrasive flow machining,magnetorheological finishing and shear thickening fluids polishing.The machining principle of the current main gear tooth profile polishing methods is described in de-tail.Examples of various processing methods are listed.The advantages and problems of each machining meth-od are summarized from the aspects of the range of machining adaptation,machining efficiency,the improve-ment rate of the surface roughness of the polished tooth profile and the requirements for the machining equip-ment.The results show that the combination of other auxiliary energy fields such as ultrasonic,laser and magnet-ic field with traditional polishing methods to achieve high efficiency,high precision and high surface consistency tooth profile polishing will be the main research direction in the future.