Enginering (metallurgy and material)

Friday, 2 September 2011

Gear

Gears are the most common means of transmitting power in mechanical engineering. There are tiny gears for devices like wrist watches and there are large gears that some of you might have noticed in the movie Titanic. Gears form vital elements of mechanisms in many machines such as vehicles, metal tooling machine tools, rolling mills, hoisting and transmitting machinery, marine engines, and the like. Toothed gears are used to change the speed, power, and direction between an input and output shaft. This site is all about Gears. Visit the pages linked below to know more about different types of gears:


Construction and Working of a Bevel Gear Reducer
One of the major applications of gears is gear reduction. The high power and low torque of the supply can be converted into high torque by coupling of a smaller input gear with a larger gear. There are different types of gear reducers depending on the types of gears coupled viz. worm gear reducer, spur gear reducer, bevel gear reducer etc.

Construction of a Bevel Gear Reducer
A bevel gear reducer consists of a small gear acting as a pinion coupled with another gear of a larger diameter at right angles to each other. The gears can be either of spur or helical type. Helical gears are preferred as they are less noisy due to gradual engagement. The material can be either plastic or metal depending on the application. Three gears can be used in case we need to keep the axis of rotation the same as that of input. The whole arrangement is sealed in a metal or plastic casing known as housing. The point of contact is lubricated with gear oil.

Working of a Bevel Gear Reducer
The diameter of the output being larger than that of the input gear, the torque of the system is increased at the expense of speed. Since the speed is decreased, this system is known as a reducer. The gears are at right angles to each other and hence the direction of the rotary motion is changed.

Advantages of a Bevel Gear Reducer
The efficiency of a bevel gear reducer is higher than that of a typical worm gear reducer. The bevel gears have high load capacity.

Applications of a Bevel Gear Reducer
Due to change in direction of the rotary motion the bevel gear reducer finds a variety of applications in industry and automotives. In industries it is used in turbines, pumps, cranks, etc. In automotives it is used in ordinary as well as limited slip differentials.
Hypoid Gears Are a Subtype of Bevel Gears
Gears are major part of any machine working on the principle of rotary motion. The motion can be produced either by a motor or engine and is called the input. The engine usually has a very high angular momentum but the torque is small. This torque is not enough for performing work under heavy load and hence cannot be used directly in industrial machines. To overcome this problem, coupled gears are used.

In coupled gear system, the input is connected through a driving shaft to a small gear called the pinion. The pinion is further coupled with a gear of larger diameter i.e. high gear ratio. Due to this form of coupling, the torque of the engine increases at the expense of angular momentum. A variety of gears can be used for this purpose viz. spur gears, helical gears, worm gears, etc.

However these gears have a limitation i.e. they can only be used in systems where the input and output shafts are in the same plane. To overcome this problem, a special type of gear called the hypoid gear is used.

The hypoid gears are a subtype of bevel gears. On observation the hypoid gear seems to be similar in appearance to the helical bevel gears. The main difference being that the planes of the input and the output gears are different. This allows for more efficient intermeshing of the pinion and driven gear. Since the contact of the teeth is gradual, the hypoid gear is silent in operation as compared to the spur gears.

These gears are usually used in industrial and automotive application and hence the material used is a metal like stainless steel. A major application of hypoid gears is in car differentials where the axes of engine and crown wheel are in different planes.

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