• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.27-32
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• 2007

Gears, crucial components in modern precision machinery for power transmission mechanisms, are required to have low contacting noise with high torque transmission, which makes the use of gear-tooth profile modifications and gear-tooth surface crowning extremely efficient and valuable. Due to the shortcomings of current techniques, such as manual rectification, mechanical modification, and numerically controlled rectification, we propose a novel electrochemical gear-tooth profile modification method based on an artificial neural network control technique. The fundamentals of electrochemical tooth-profile modifications based on real-time control and a mathematical model of the process are discussed in detail. Due to the complex and uncertain relationships among the machining parameters of electrochemical tooth-profile modification processes, we used an artificial neural network to determine the required processing electric current as the tooth-profile modification requirements were supplied. The system was implemented and a practical example was used to demonstrate that this technology is feasible and has potential applications in the production of precision machinery.