THE MESH PROPERTY OF THE STEEL INVOLUTE CYLINDRICAL WORM WITH A PLASTIC INVOLUTE HELICAL GEAR

Abstract

With the increasing use of plastic gears in substitution of conventional steel ones, a plastic involute helical gear has been introduced to engage with a steel involute worm thus forming a novel plastic-steel worm-gear pair. The geometry and kinematics of this kind of worm-gear pair has been established first to derive its meshing properties which have been further verified by the finite element simulation. And it turns out that the contact area of this worm-gear pair is a point or an ellipse instead of a line. Further, a discrete dynamic model has been applied to investigate the dynamic transmission of motion and power of this worm-gear pair through the dynamic mesh force and the driven plastic involute helical gear. And the effects of angular and distance assembling errors have also been included.