Research Methods and Applications of Gear Manufacturing Process Optimization

This paper presents an optimization method for gear processes; through this method, the most worth optimized processes can be obtained and optimized, thus improving the reliability and supportability of gear products. Firstly, the POPN (Process Optimization Priority Number) analysis method considering the current process level and the process improvement cost is proposed with reference to the RPN (Risk Priority Number) analysis method to obtain the most worth optimized processes. Due to the fact that the unreasonable weight distribution of importance (I), changing difficulty (C), rationality (R), and detective difficulty (D) still exists in the POPN analysis, then combining the POPN analysis method and the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process)-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to evaluate and rank the FPOPN (fuzzy POPN) level of each process, the higher the FPOPN level is, the more the process should be optimized. Finally, according to the evaluation results, some processes with high FPOPN level are optimized and the optimal parameters’ combination of these processes is obtained through the tests based on the Taguchi method. A detailed optimization example is also given from the beginning to end in accordance with the above methods, and compared with the original process gears, the optimized gears have a big increase in gear performance through the above optimization method.