Gear Honing

Gear Honing

Gear Honing - Gear tooth honing is a gear finishing process that improves the surface finish of the tooth profile and reduces the noise of spur and helical gears after heat treatment. Gear honing is a finishing method for hardened gears. The process removes nicks and burrs, and corrects heat treatment errors.

Gear honing is performed on a machine tool resembling the gear shaving machine. The pear tooth hone is an abrasive imbedded plastic helical gear shaped tool. The grain size of the abrasive with which it is charged is selected to suit the honing allowance (0'025 to 0.05 mm) and the surface finish requirements.

The work gear is meshed with the honing tool in a crossed­ axis relationship. There is no infeed mechanism. The honing tool drives the work gear while it (work gear) traverses back and forth in a parallel path to the work gear axis. The gear is run in both the directions during the process.

Gear tooth honing can be carried out with either a constant pressure between teeth of the gear and honing tool or under zero back lash conditions and a constant centre to centre distance. More accurate gears are produced by the first method. Ample supply of cutting fluid to remove the metallic dust from the tooth surfaces being honed is used.