Straight bevel gears are an increasingly popular choice for certain applications. Prior to the introduction by Gleason of a 6-axis machining process for straight bevel gears in 2006, there was no modern machinery or process to cut or grind straight bevel gears. The process introduced in 2006 was a wet cutting process, using traditional high speed steel cutting tools.
The new CONIFLEX®Plus system raises the bar by allowing the use of coated carbide cutting tools in a high-speed dry cutting environment. This new process is up to three times faster than its predecessor, avoids the use of cutting fluids, and consumes only 25% of the energy of traditional straight bevel gear cutting.
The geometry of existing straight bevel gear designs will be exactly duplicated using the new CONIFLEX®Plus cutter system. Furthermore the new system provides additional freedoms for strength and noise optimizations due to the free design of profile curvature, dish angle edge radius and blade point.. The PENTAC® stick blades, used in CONIFLEX®Plus cutter heads can be sharpened on existing standard Gleason stick blade sharpening machines, no additional software or fixtures are required.