Investigation of tooth thickness faults in small plastic gears

Abstract

In this article we investigated the tooth thickness faults of small plastic gears. Faults in tooth thickness can lead to excessive heating and failure of the gears. It is therefore worth investigating how these can be detected. For the measurements, we used an equipment that is capable of measuring the recirculation torque to investigate the effects of faults on the teeth of small plastic gears. For the analyses, gear geometries were created using 3D CAD software that included a tooth that was different from the standard tooth thickness. The other teeth of the gears were the standard size. The thickness of the faulty tooth was either 0.1 or 0.2 mm less or more than the standard. These gears were analysed by pairing them with gears that did not contain faulty teeth.