Design and analysis of the electronic helical guide controller

This paper presents an Electronic Helical Guide Controller (EHGC) for the helical gear shaping process. Considering that the pinion cutter’s reciprocating movement is driven by a crank-connecting rod mechanism in most traditional gear shaping machines, this study adopts this kind of gear shaper as the machine platform to establish an accurate mathematical model. Then, the helical guide movement control algorithm is embedded in the interpolation module of the gear shaping CNC system using the electronic gearbox techniques to realize the special multi-axis linkage control requirements of the helical gear shaping process. The crankshaft’s angular position is measured by the internal sensor, so the rotational speed could be calculated online in each interpolation control cycle. The actual position and the velocity of the shaper cutter along the Z-axis are calculated using the kinematic model of the crank-connecting mechanism, at the same time, the motion of the other axes is controlled by the electronic gearbox. The proposed EHGC is low cost and very easy to implement in practice since it does not need a linear grating ruler and a probe on the Z-axis. The gear machining accuracy can also be estimated online by the EHGC, so as to guide the selection of the process parameters and improve the production efficiency. Experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed EHGC.