Performance Evaluation and Vibration Analysis of Nylon-6 and FDM Moulded Coupling Gear and Sleeves

Gear couplings are commonly used in industry, the plastic moulded couplings are now industrial mainstay. Today they transfer torque and motion in various products ranging from missiles, cars, sewing machines, building controls, and watches. With the ground theyve gained their evolution is still continuing as they are used in more demanding gear applications. Plastic gear couplings are serious alternatives to traditional metal gear coupling in a wide variety of applications. The use of plastic gear coupling has grown from low-power and precision transmission to more demanding power transmission applications. Conventional method of manufacturing is the plastic moulding for sleeves whereas the gears are made of plain carbon steel, but this is only for a substantial batch quantity. In present day situation many a times it is required to produce small quantity of products for which plastic moulding is not a economical solution. In such cases the method of FDM (Fused deposition modelling) can be used. But though the method is extremely fast and economical for small batch quantity, the performance of parts produced by this method are yet to be proven for strength and durability. The paper attempts to design develop and manufacture the coupling gear and sleeves in Nylon-6 and by FDM process. Project work will include design of the parts using Unigraphix Nx 8, Analysis using Ansys Work bench 16.0 and experimentally investigate the vibration performance of the coupling using vibrometer set up.