Hardening Distortions of Serial Produced Gears

Abstract: Hardening distortions are unwanted changes in shape and dimension that arise during hardening of steel components. Uncontrolled distortions induce random errors to the manufacturing process, and have a strong negative impact on manufacturing costs. The distortions are not only caused by the hardening process, several factors from previous manufacturing steps including the component geometry itself contribute to varying extent. The aim of the current work is to investigate the main influencing factors on hardening distortions for serial produced gears.The investigations were done on two different types of gears for heavy-duty transmissions, crown wheels for the rear axle central gear and main shaft gears for the gearbox. The steel was produced using either continuous casting or ingot casting. For rectangular continuously cast steel, the effect of disabling magnetic stirring of the steel melt during casting was investigated, finding a strong reduction of gear runout for crown wheels. Segregations in crown wheels produced from the top and bottom of ingots were shown to go in opposite directions, producing opposite back-face tilts.For crown wheels quenched one at a time, influences of stacking level on the hardening tray were found, indicating an impact from small variations in the carburizing process, despite identical quenching conditions. For main shaft gears, horizontal loading gave considerably less roundness and runout errors but increased flatness errors compared to vertical loading.This thesis shows the complexity of the distortion phenomenon and how several factors interact and contribute to the final result. It is shown that factors with significant impact on hardening distortions for one component may be less important for another component. With this in mind, each type of component to be hardened should be produced by a manufacturing chain where each process step is carefully chosen with respect to minimizing distortions.