Some geometrical aspects of skew polyangular involute gearing (Q1301150)

The paper deals with offset skew involute gearings (contrary to the well-known crossed-axes' helical involute gearings of cylindrical kind). The zone of meshing is offset, and the meshing is located not at the centre distance line (CDL), but is removed from it. The author proposes for this case the notion of ``general spatial involute gearing''. The main features of this gearing are: (a) transmission between shafts that are skew; (b) employing paths for the contact points that are both straight and both located in a space remote from the CDL; (c) the use of a pure spatial involute geometry, namely the geometry of mating involute helicoids, for kinematic synthesis and practical mechanical design. The polyangular architecture is a subset of a more general architecture, equiangular is another subset, and ordinary planar involute gearing is a special case of the latter. The paper presents investigations that are a part of larger work, which is not yet complete.