Fatigue Fracture Investigation of Cemented Carbide Tools in Gear Hobbing, Part 1: FEM Modeling of Fly Hobbing and Computational Interpretation of Experimental Results

Abstract

Gear hobbing is a highly utilized flexible manufacturing process for massive production of external gears. However, the complex geometry of cutting hobs is responsible for the almost exclusive utilization of high-speed steel (HSS) as cutting tool material. The limited cutting performance of HSS, even coated HSS, restricts the application of high cutting speeds and restricts the full exploitation of modern CNC hobbing machine tools. The application of cemented carbide tools was considered as a potential alternative to modern production requirements. In former investigations an experimental variation of gear hobbing, the so-called fly hobbing was applied, in order to specify the cutting performance of cemented carbide tools in gear production. These thorough experiments indicated that cracks, which were not expected, might occur in specific cutting cases, leading to the early failure of the entire cutting tool. In order to interpret computationally the reasons for these failures, an FEM simulation of the cutting process was developed, supported by advanced software tools able to determine the chip formation and the cutting forces during gear hobbing. The computational results explain sufficiently the failure mechanisms and they are quite in line with the experimental findings. The first part of this paper applies the verified parametric FEM model for various cutting cases, indicating the most risky cutting teeth with respect to their fatigue danger. In a step forward, the second part of the paper illustrates the effect of various technological and geometric parameters to the expected tool life. Therefore, the optimization of the cutting process is enabled, through the proper selection of cutting parameters, which can eliminate the failure danger of cemented carbide cutting tools, thus achieving satisfactory cost effectiveness.