ABSTRACT
Designing a rack cutter for planing spur and helical gears, as well as herringbone gears and double-helical gears, begins with a comprehensive analysis of the kinematics of the gear machining mesh in a gear planing operation. The kinematics of gear machining operation in all possible parallel-axes gear machining meshes, including, but not limited to, the kinematics of gear planing operation by rack cutters is briefly explained in this chapter. The equality between tooth thickness of the rack cutter and tooth space width makes the rack cutter interchangeable —the same rack cutter can be used for machining gears having different tooth numbers. In a conventional gear planing operation, the reciprocation of the rack cutter is utilized as the cutting motion. The modification of vector representation of the kinematics of the gear machining process allows for a method of the generation of the cylindrical gear with two milling cutters.
