Gear Cutting

Gear cutting is any machining process for creating a gear. The most common gear-cutting processes include hobbing, broaching, milling, and grinding. Such cutting operations may occur either after or instead of forming processes such as forging, extruding, investment casting, or sand casting.

Gears are commonly made from metal, plastic. Although gear cutting is a substantial industry, many metal and plastic gears are made without cutting, by processes such as die casting or injection molding   Some metal gears made with powder metallurgy require subsequent machining, whereas others are complete after sintering. Likewise, metal or plastic gears made with additive manufacturing may or may not require finishing by cutting, depending on application.

The old method of gear cutting is mounting a gear blank in a shaper and using a tool shaped in the profile of the tooth to be cut. This method also works for cutting internal splines.Another is a pinion-shaped cutter that is used in a gear shaper machine. It is basically when a cutter that looks similar to a gear cuts a gear blank. The cutter and the blank must have a rotating axis parallel to each other. This process works well for low and high production runs.

Milling/Grinding

To machine a helical gear on a manual machine, a true indexing fixture must be used. Indexing fixtures can disengage the drive worm, and be attached via an external gear train to the machine table's handle . It then operates similarly to a carriage on a lathe. As the table moves on the X axis, the fixture will rotate in a fixed ratio with the table.