ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF WORM GEAR AND BEVEL GEAR

We have discussed in our previous post about the types of bevel gears and we have also seen the concept of worms and worm gears. Today we will try to understand here the various advantage and disadvantage of bevel gears and worms and worm gears separately. 

I will suggest to my readers to find my previous posts as mentioned above for complete understanding of bevel gears and worms and worm gears unit.

So let us start to find out the various advantage and disadvantage of bevel gears

Bevel Gears: Advantage

1. Operating angle could be changed and this characteristic of bevel gear makes it more flexible in operation
2. Bevel gears could also be made my nylon or plastic and such bevel gears made of plastics are generally used in electric toy industries.
3. Bevel gear efficiency is quite enough; bevel gear may provide efficiency up to 90 % and also more than 90 % in few cases.
4. Manufacturing costing will be less
5. Sliding friction will also be lower in bevel gearing mechanism

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Bevel Gears: Disadvantage

1. Bevel gears should be assembled with respective shaft precisely
2. Bevel gears are not desirable for high speed reduction; such gears could be used maximum speed reduction up to 5:1
3. At high speed, such gearing mechanism will produce noise

Worms and worms gear: Advantage

1. Higher speed reduction could be secured; speed reduction could be secured up to 300: 1
2. Worm and worm gears operate silently
3. Worm and worm gears will have one characteristics i.e. self locking. Reverse movement will be restricted but this characteristic depends on lead angle and friction angle, we have discussed this concept in our discussion in previous post during study of worm and worm gear.
4. Worm and worm gear unit will be preferred to use if space is restricted as we have already discussed that worm and worm gear unit could be used for heavy speed reduction in compact space also.
5. Handsome output torque will be secured here with the application of worm and worm gear.

Image courtesy: Google

Worms and worms gear: Disadvantage

1. Manufacturing cost is heavy as compared with manufacturing cost of bevel gear
2. Cost of raw material to manufacture the worm and worm gear set will be quite high
3. Worm and worm gear set will have heavy power losses.
4. Efficiency will be low
5. If speed reduction ratio is large, worm teeth sliding action will create lots of heat
6. Lubrication scheduled must be strictly maintained for healthiness of worm and worm gear as this unit requires much lubrication for smooth working of gearbox.

We have discussed about the applications of worm and worm gear in our previous post, but we have not discussed about the applications of bevel gears, so let us discuss here various applications of bevel gears

Applications of bevel gears

1. Bevel gears are used to transmit the power and motion between two shafts when speed and load both are small.
2. Hypoid Bevel gears are used in various automobile applications such as vehicle differential drives
3. Bevel gears are mostly used in marine applications, locomotives, energy sector, steel sector, cement units, defence sector, cooling tower and printing presses.
4. Bevel gears are used as the key mechanism of hand drill
5. Sewing machines use spiral bevel gears

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6. Shaft alignment terminology
7. Basic of shaft alignment
8. Shaft alignment procedure

Your suggestion will be always precious for us and we will also update your suggestions in our posts, I will request to my readers to provide the feedback and suggestions in comment box in respect of various applications of above mentioned gears and also advantage as well as disadvantage of mentioned gears.