A Study on the Extrusion by a two-step process for manufacturing helical gear

Much research has been carried out in the manufacturing of helical gears by cold forging or by extrusion. Although cold forging is applied to some bevel, spur, and helical gears, problems in connection with the reduction forming load and tool life still make it difficult for these methods to be commercialized. In this study, focusing on reducing a load in forming helical gears, the extrusion of helical gears by two-step process is proposed. This process is composed primarily of extruding a billet to a spur gear and then twisting the previous spur gear extruded to a helical gear. Cylindrical billets of Cr-Mo steel(SCM 415) and aluminium alloy(Al60 series) were used as specimen materials for the experiments. The maximum loads obtained by upper-bound analysis and FEM are compared with the results of experiments. The loads of the analysis have good agreements with those of the experiment. The newly proposed method can be used as an advanced technique that remarkably reduces the forming load and replaces the conventional forming.