Gears on the test bench 

      
Maximum precision thanks to worm gears from norelem
    
As part of a project, students at the Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule (OTH) Regensburg have further developed the prototype of a gear test bench and made it ready for use. This allows the parallelism error of gears to be determined very precisely. The maintenance-free zinc worm drives from the norelem range were particularly helpful in this process.
     
The ‘Rotax’ gear test bench at OTH Regensburg can be used to test 3D-printed plastic gears with different characteristic values for durability, wear and noise development. Other properties such as torque, speed and temperature can also be measured and documented.
    
One challenge when designing the test bench was to realise an axial and a radial adjustment option - while at the same time connecting the drive shaft to an immersion tank. With the help of two linear units, both the drive shaft and the output shaft can now be moved in an axial direction.
    
A worm gear from norelem also makes it possible to adjust the drive shaft radially, allowing the helical running of gears to be tested. Thanks to the high transmission ratio of the worm gear, the parallelism deviation can be set with an accuracy of 0.1°. The angle adjustment can be easily read off using a 3D-printed scale developed in-house.
    
By positioning the gears in an immersion tank, they can be tested in liquids with different viscosities and their service life or running properties can be determined in different oils or coolants.