Maag Gear-wheel & Machine Company Limited

Guy-Francois Blanc

Meinrad Donner

Hans Spaeth

Fritz Loehrer

Urs Walliser

A grinding wheel support, for instance of a large gear grinding machine, moves up and down during the grinding operation in a non-horizontal guide and is driven by a linear motor which does not possess any self-locking action, for instance a piston-and-cylinder arrangement which is powered by a pressurized oil pump. A brake retains the grinding wheel support in its rest position. During the transition from the rest position into the position-regulation mode the grinding wheel support must not carry out any uncontrolled or undesired movements. Therefore, the grinding wheel support, starting from the time that it is placed into operation out of its rest position, is allowed a certain upward movement play, in order to render possible a surge-free placement into operation of the actual position regulation operation of the position regulator. For this purpose a position measuring system measures a starting position-actual value in the rest position, to which there is added a part of the movement play by means of a set value former, in order to thus define a starting position-set or reference value. The position regulator then controls the pump until the grinding disk support has reached the starting position-set value under the action of the linear motor. At this point in time the brake is released and there can begin the actual position regulation operation.

Arrangement for starting-up a position regulator of a grinding wheel

The profile measurement control comprises a potentiometer adjustable by means of a lever. The voltage tapped-off the potentiometer is attenuated via a resistance network proportional to the radius of the base circle disc and additionally via an encoding switch and a voltage attenuating circuit when a certain pre-selected diagram length transmission or translation is exceeded. Thus a voltage is always supplied to the drive motor driving a generating carriage or slide which ensures for an optimum paper feed rate when the lever is located to engage a stop. Hence, the lever can be always adjusted to engage the stop without the preselected diagram length translation or the radius of the selected base circle disc having to be taken into account. Consequently, the measuring rate during series testing of gear profiles can be considerably increased.

Profile measurement control for a gear measuring machine

Gear pitch testing apparatus has a computer control for programming relative displacements between a gear and a pair of probes, and means for automatically comparing test data with stored reference values to indicate deviations in the gear under test. Initial setting of the apparatus for a test sequence requires the operator only to control the relative displacements of the gear and probes to synchronise them approximately, the coarse adjustment thus obtained then being automatically modified in an electronically controlled fine adjustment stage to co-ordinate the movement between the gear and the probes accurately and allow such characteristics as absolute cumulative pitch error to be evaluated.

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Zurich, Switzerland

Guy-Francois Blanc