A Novel Approach to Calculating the Transmission Accuracy of a Cycloid-Pin Gear Pair Based on Error Tooth Surfaces

Transmission error (TE) and backlash are important parameters used to evaluate the transmission accuracy of cycloid-pin drives. Existing calculation methods are mostly based on two-dimensional tooth profile models, and these methods ignore the influence of some abnormal meshing phenomena caused by profile modifications (PMs), manufacturing errors (MEs), and assembly errors (AEs), such as the instantaneous mesh-apart of tooth pairs and the eccentric load on the tooth surface. To fill this gap, a novel approach to accurately calculating the TE and backlash of a cycloid-pin gear pair based on the error tooth surfaces is proposed, and its feasibility and effectiveness are validated by comparison with the theoretical analyses and the results from the literature. Based on this, the effects of the PMs, MEs, and AEs on the transmission accuracy are studied, which will be helpful in optimizing the tooth profile design of a cycloid gear and the tolerance allocation during the installation of a gear pair. The proposed method is also expected to provide accurate error excitation data for the dynamic analysis of cycloid-pin drives.