Abstract
Gears with involute teeth are commonly used in mechanical equipment to transmit rotation and torque continuously and smoothly. Standard gears are generally designed with a drawing attached a parametric list, and manufactured by gear cutting machines. However, design and manufacturing for many special shaped gears used in robots, computers and other equipment are difficult and expensive by current methods, so that it is necessary to use 3D-CAD (three-dimensional computer aided design) and multi-axial NC (Numerical Control) machining. This paper deals with 3D-CAD and 5-axial CAM (computer aided manufacturing) for gears, which consists of (1) theoretical basis and CAD of the involute curve, (2) creation of 3D gear models, fillet and chamfer, (3) parametric feature-based solid modeling and smart object library for gear CAD, (4) brief discussion about gear CAM.
