Plastic Gear Standards: A Balancing Act

摘要

Creating standards for plastic gears calls for a deft touch. The challenge is to set uniform guidelines, yet avoid limiting the creative solutions plastic offers gear designers. Few standards and guides exist for plastic gears. This is not surprising given that they have only been used for about 60 years compared to hundreds of years for metal gearing. Another reason lies in plastic's great variability. This class of materials encompasses diverse resin families, each offering many choices in the nature of the polymer and the ability to enhance performance with fibers, fillers and functional additives. In addition, a polymer's mechanical properties can shift significantly with temperature and other environmental factors within the typical operating range of a gear set.