Abstract
A new relief-grinding system for a gear hob, consisting of a CNC relief-grinding machine and its support software, was developed. The CNC relief-grinding machine has a truing apparatus that can true a grinding wheel into an arbitrary profile. The relief-grinding machine has five control axes and can automatically finish the tooth flanks of the hob. The support software can calculate the grinding wheel profile to finish the tooth flanks of the hob with the given cutting edge profile and automatically produce NC programs used for truing of the grinding wheel, relief grinding of the hob, etc. Also, it can calculate the maximum regrinding stock and the regrinding errors of the hob being finished. The usefulness of the developed relief-grinding system is confirmed through the finishing tests of the involute gear hob.
