1.

0 INTRODUCTION

The history of bevel gears is old so that you can even see them in the sketches of the
all-around genius of the Renaissance period, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). His sketches
show items similar to what we call shaft attached bevel gears. But amazingly in other
sketches, he shows one identical to what we now call hypoid gears where the axes of the
larger and smaller gears are offset.

It is not certain when the gears themselves were used, but we can confirm based on
Aristotle’s records those they already existed in B.C. in use in water wheels. For bevel gears,
even though the forms are different from the present versions, through archaeological
remains in the Middle East, during B.C., we can confirm the use of wooden gears with shaft
angles at 90 degrees.

The modern day bevel gear production history continues from the latter half of 1800’s, and
was heavily influenced by the Gleason Company’s technological development. At present,
even though Klingelnberg type bevel gears possessing high grade gears are partly still used in
Germany, the Gleason type bevel gears as produced by our facility command the majority of
the bevel gear market.

Bevel gears are classified in different types according to geometry:

1. Straight bevel
 Straight bevel gears have conical pitch surface and teeth are straight and
tapering towards apex.

2. Spiral bevel
 Spiral bevel gears have curved teeth at an angle allowing tooth contact to be
gradual and smooth.
 3. Zerol bevel
 Zerol bevel gears are very similar to a bevel gear only exception is the teeth
are curved: the ends of each tooth are coplanar with the axis, but the middle of
each tooth is swept circumferentially around the gear. Zerol bevel gears can be
thought of as spiral bevel gears, which also have curved teeth, but with a spiral
angle of zero, so the ends of the teeth align with the axis.

4. Hypoid bevel
 Hypoid bevel gears are similar to spiral bevel but the pitch surfaces are
hyperbolic and not conical.

Bevel gears are useful when the direction of a shaft's rotation needs to be changed. They are
usually mounted on shafts that are 90 degrees apart, but can be designed to work at other
angles as well.

The teeth on bevel gears can be straight, spiral or hypoid. Straight bevel gear teeth actually
have the same problem as straight spur gear teeth -- as each tooth engages; it impacts the
corresponding tooth all at once. Just like with spur gears, the solution to this problem is to
curve the gear teeth. These spiral teeth engage just like helical teeth: the contact starts at one
end of the gear and progressively spreads across the whole tooth. On straight and spiral bevel
gears, the shafts must be perpendicular to each other, but they must also be in the same plane.
If you were to extend the two shafts past the gears, they would intersect. The hypoid gear, on
the other hand, can engage with the axes in different planes.