A brief description of the 4 types of gearboxes :: Talk About Industry Articles

In this article, we will briefly introduce 4 types of gearboxes. Helical Gearbox, Bevel Gears, Worm Gearbox, Planetary Gearbox.

Helical Gearbox

A gear is a rotating circular machine part having cut teeth or, in the case of a cogwheel or gearwheel, inserted teeth (called cogs), which mesh with another toothed part to transmit torque. A gear may also be known informally as a cog. Geared devices can change the speed, torque, and direction of a power source. Gears of different sizes produce a change in torque, creating a mechanical advantage, through their gear ratio, and thus may be considered a simple machine. The rotational speeds, and the torques, of two meshing gears differ in proportion to their diameters. The teeth on the two meshing gears all have the same shape. Helical gears are power transmission instruments primarily utilized to reduce speed and increase torque between turning shafts. Fundamentally, they can be divided into two forms, those that transmit energy between parallel parts and those that transfer power between non-parallel components, typically introduced as cross-axis gears.

Bevel Gears

The cylindrical gear tooth profile corresponds to an involute , whereas the bevel gear tooth profile is an octoid. All traditional bevel gear generators manufacture bevel gears with an octoidal tooth profile. IMPORTANT: For 5-axis milled bevel gear sets it is important to choose the same calculation/layout as the conventional manufacturing method.

In general, we have 3 categories of Bevel Gears: one of which we will explain here.

Bevel gears are employed in differential drives, which can transfer energy to two axles rotating at different velocities, such as those on a cornering automobile.

Worm Gearbox

A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm (which is a gear in the form of a screw) meshes with a worm wheel (which is similar in appearance to a spur gear). The two elements are also called the worm screw and worm gear. The terminology is often confused by imprecise use of the term worm gear to refer to the worm, the worm wheel, or the worm drive as a unit.

For applications that need higher speed, a worm gearbox can be employed. Some of the applications of a worm gearbox are:

Mining
Presses
Rolling mills
Escalator/ Elevator Drive systems

Planetary Gearbox

An epicyclic gear train (also known as a planetary gearset) consists of two gears mounted so that the center of one gear revolves around the center of the other. A carrier connects the centers of the two gears and rotates to carry one gear, called the planet gear or planet pinion, around the other, called the sun gear or sun wheel.

The planetary gearbox got its term because of how the various gears move in a set together. We see a satellite (ring) gear, a sun (solar) gear, and two or more planet gears in a planetary gearbox. The sun-gear is normally run and thus move the planet gears bolted in the planet carrier and form the output shaft. The satellite gears have a constant location in relation to the outside components.

More information in the following references