Gear Heat Treatment with Induction - New Process Alternatives and Advantages

摘要

Keeping costs low when manufacturing gears requires that the engineer concurrently select materials and processes. Both are interdependent. Heat treating—among the many processes needed to produce gears-requires an especially thorough level of research by the engineer. The selected heat treat process, which follows a variety of other gear-making operations, provides the gear's desired mechanical performance attributes. These include bending strength, wear resistance, surface condition, and dimensionality. Because of the variety of alternative processes that can be used to make a gear, the manufacturing engineer is faced with literally thousand of alternative ways and combinations-and decisions-on how to make any given gear. Selecting the lowest cost method for one operation can drive up the cost of production or even add operations. Value in gear-making results from having the fewest number of operations performed successively in a synchronous manner with little or no work in process between operations. This article outlines some of the new alternatives associated with induction heat treatment, as well as their advantages.