Helical gearboxes have a broad range of applications in many industries. They are a great choice for high-speed and low-torque applications, and they offer greater flexibility compared to spur gear sets. They also reduce noise and wear.
Helical Gears are a type of involute gear that are characterized by their helix angle, pressure angle and tooth thickness. They are typically used for torque and rotational motion transfer among parallel axes, but they can also be used in straight-angle applications.
Helix angles on a helical gear pair are adjustable to compensate for the bending and twisting of the teeth when load is applied. This allows for mating helical gears on parallel shafts to be either left-handed or right-handed, depending on the desired input rotation direction.
The helix angle of a helical gear is usually a range from 15deg to 30deg. This helix angle is the angle between the axis of the helix and the plane of mesh, which is the main gearing surface. It is important for a helix angle to be adjusted properly to ensure proper meshing between a gear pair’s involute teeth.
Involute teeth in a helical gear have an active profile, and the start of this profile and end of it are called the SAP and EAP, respectively. Diameters and roll angles are often used to indicate these points, with SAP as the lower value by convention.
A helical gear’s total length of contact lines is always non-zero, meaning it does not have an equal distribution over the total length of the contact lines throughout the mesh cycle. This means that it may vary slightly over time, but it is generally less than the total variation in the mean length of the contact lines.
This variance causes the total length of the contact lines to move more gradually through a mesh cycle than the mean value. This is desirable, because it allows the teeth to slide more easily, reducing dynamic tooth loads and noise.
Tooth thickness is measured in both the transverse and normal planes of a helical gear, and is a key determinant of tooth bending strength. It is primarily determined by the module and profile shift, but it also depends on the tooling and work piece.
As mentioned before, profile shift is a common manufacturing process for helical gears. This process causes the gears to have a larger diameter than the theoretical pitch diameter at their center gaps, and thus to have an elliptical shape.
It is important to note that a greater difference between the two is undesirable, because it leads to higher friction power loss. Hence, it is best to use a smaller module with a higher modulus when designing helical gears for transmission efficiency.
The module’s diameter is also a factor in the helix angle. The higher the module’s diameter, the longer the helix angle must be to produce an elliptical shape.
The helix angle of a helix gear is a critical dimension for proper meshing, and it is often adjusted to account for the bending and twisting of the involute teeth during load application. This makes helix angle adjustments a necessary part of the design process for mating helical gears on shafts with wide face widths, which are typically found in single and double helical gears.