Movable Clamping Teeth for Distortion-Tolerant Gear Chucking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Machining of mass-produced, externally or internally toothed components post-heat treatment poses challenges due to potential distortion, non-ideal shapes, and the need for efficient clamping without damaging tooth flanks, especially when components are not yet hardened.
Innovation Solution
A clamping insert with a multi-part holding segment and asymmetrical clamping teeth that provide play in the circumferential direction, allowing for curved engagement contours that adapt to the component's geometry, ensuring stable and material-friendly clamping without using rollers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If traditional rigid clamping teeth are used, then clamping force is sufficient, but the clamping teeth may damage the tooth flanks of the workpiece due to misalignment or non-ideal shapes
Solution Approach 1:
The clamping teeth are designed to be movable relative to the holding segment, allowing them to dynamically adjust their position and orientation during the clamping process. This dynamic capability enables the teeth to adapt to variations in workpiece geometry and alignment, maintaining effective clamping force while preventing damage to the tooth flanks through self-adjustment rather than rigid contact
Solution Approach 2:
The clamping teeth are allowed to change their positional parameters relative to the holding segment during operation. By permitting controlled movement and position variation, the system can optimize the contact conditions between clamping teeth and workpiece teeth, ensuring adequate clamping force is applied at the correct locations without excessive stress that would cause damage
2Adaptability or versatility
If rollers are used to enable alignment, then adaptability to workpiece geometry improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts and eliminates the roller components from the clamping mechanism. Instead of using separate alignment elements like rollers, the alignment function is integrated directly into the clamping teeth themselves through their movable mounting on the holding segment, thereby achieving the desired adaptability while reducing overall device complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The alignment function and clamping function are merged into a single integrated system. The clamping teeth serve dual purposes: they provide the clamping force necessary to hold the workpiece and simultaneously perform alignment through their ability to move and adjust their position relative to the holding segment, eliminating the need for separate alignment mechanisms
3Manufacturing precision
If multiple clamping teeth are rigidly fixed, then positioning precision is high, but the system cannot adapt to distorted or non-ideal workpiece shapes
Solution Approach 1:
The clamping teeth are designed with movable mounting on the holding segment, enabling them to dynamically adjust their positions during clamping. This dynamic capability allows the system to maintain high positioning precision for each individual tooth while simultaneously adapting to distorted or non-ideal workpiece shapes through collective adjustment of multiple teeth
Solution Approach 2:
The clamping system is segmented into multiple independently movable clamping teeth rather than a single rigid structure. Each tooth can move independently on its holding segment, allowing the system to maintain precise positioning at each contact point while adapting to overall workpiece distortions through the coordinated movement of segmented elements
Data Source
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AI summary
The invention relates to a clamping insert (5) for clamping jaws (2) of a clamping chuck (1), comprising holding segments (4) with a multi-part design to be fastened to the clamping jaws (2). In each holding segment (4), individual clamping teeth (18) are held, which together describe a curved toothed engagement contour (12) corresponding with the dimensioning of a toothed component (13) to be clamped, the plurality of clamping teeth (18) being received in the holding segment (4) with play in the circumferential direction.