Abstract
The injection molding of plastic gears generally requires the structure of gear to have small rim thickness for achieving higher accuracy of its tooth geometry. The rim thickness greatly affects tooth bending stress, because of changes in stress distribution due to rim-web structure. In the present paper, the effect of rim thickness on endurance of injection molded POM gears was investigated. As a result, it was confirmed that the service life decreased with smaller rim thickness. Furthermore, maximum principal stress resulted from finite-element analysis could determine the effect of molded plastic gears.
