scope:

Although elemental gear inspection is rarely specified for molded plastic gears, themeasurement equipment and practices can be valuable in advancing the molding processes and improving the quality of the molded gears. After a brief description of plastic gear tooling and molding, this paper gives examples of specific elemental measurements and relates themto process changes andquality improvements.Such examples for spur and helical gears include: profile measurements leading to gear mesh noise reduction; lead measurement leading to increased face width load distribution and, continuing from that, even to the molding of crowned gears; and index measurement leading to improved roundness of gears molded from fiber reinforced plastic materials.