Grinding of Cycloidal Gears

In contrast to involute gears, cycloidal gears can provide reduction ratios from 30: to 1 to 300:1 in very compact package spaces. Cycloidal gears feature excellent torsional stiffness, zero-backlash over their whole service life, and very high positioning accuracy. All of these features make them ideal for industrial applications such as machine tool indexing drives and robotics, all of which require servo precision, stiffness, and a long service life that is free of backlash. Traditionally, cycloidal gears were much more difficult to grind than involute gears. In the past, these gears were ground by profile grinding in individual tooth-by-tooth steps. Today, the Reishauer continuous generating grinding method is the better alternative. This method is not only faster but delivers more accurate, high-precision tooth spacing and tooth profiles, free of any transition points that may have occurred in profile grinding. Cycloidal gears are ground in pairs for which the Reishauer machines offer the right clamping solutions. Furthermore, after grinding, the cycloidal gears can be polish-ground in the same clamping operation, which adds an excellent surface finish to the high-accuracy geometry. Finally, yet importantly, the Reishauer software makes the set-up of the cycloidal grinding process easy, user-friendly, and highly productive. ~