Integrated technology of wheel gear manufacture

Gears are an integral part of many mechanisms and machines. The advent of new composite materials gives rise to an increase in load capacity of gears and in reduction their weight. The aim of this work is to develop an integrated manufacturing technology of gears using fiber reinforced plastic composite (FRP). Literature review identified only some scattered research in this area, dedicated to the development of ways to increase the load capacity of the gears. Technological heredity in the manufacture of FRP gears is much stronger and therefore the influence of manufacturing steps must necessarily be taken into account in design of manufacturing plan. This allows optimization of fiber reinforcement scheme including as orientation in the direction of the greatest loads as minimize damage during subsequent machining of high accuracy gears. It is shown that the load capacity of the carbon FRP gears is at the level of the load capacity of gears made from other non-metallic materials, but only for CFRP gears has a large reserve for increase of the load capacity by optimizing the schemes of fiber reinforcement and manufacturing technology, which has not yet been achieved.