Study on tooth profile error of cylindrical gears manufactured by flexible free-form milling

The free-form milling of gears is a modern and flexible machining process that allows the manufacturing of external gears by using standard milling tools on universal machine center. In this paper, tooth profile error of cylindrical gears manufactured by flexible free-form milling is studied. Firstly, a mathematical model is established to investigate the tool path with respect to geometric characteristic of gear surface according to the theory of spatial form milling. Then, the influence of tooth profile error related to the processing parameters such as the type of tool, the feeding strategy of tool, and the basic parameters of gear is studied. Finally, for a validation, an experiment is performed using a universal multiaxis machine center with standard end mill. The experimental results show that free-form milling of gears is an effective and economical solution for manufacturing high-quality gears while a universal machine center is available. Furthermore, the study results support the engineers in the selection of optimal processing parameters by using free-form milling method.