Helical Gear Reducer Guide

What is a helical gear reducer?

A helical gear reducer, also known as a helical gearbox, is part of components in the transmission systems, which is used to regulate and transmit the electric power or energy from the motor to the connected device as the kinetic energy.

The regulating of the power or energy of the motor with a helical gear reducer is actually to increase the torque that is brought by the motor, but reduce the operation speed of the device instead, and this result is achieved by the interaction between the teeth on each gear that intersect to one another.

The gear reducers are widely adopted in various applications, which range from the components of the machines for manufacturing processes, such as the cutting machines, conveyers, or milling machines, to the accessories of the products that operate when the products work, such as the blowers, compressors, or automobiles, etc.

For the applications of the gear reducers, to achieve the optimal efficiency is not to ensure the maximum speed of the operation. Instead, it requires the well-regulated parameters including the torque and the speed, which should be properly distributed that it can guarantee the best performances of these devices.

Therefore, the gear reducers are invented to do these duties. However, the gear reducer is not one-size-fits-all for every application. In other words, for different applications that have varied features or functions, the gear reducers should be designed as different forms as well.

There are a variety of gear reducers that serve for different applications, which can be mainly differentiated depending on the shapes of gears, including the helical, worm, spur, and bevel gear reducers. Among all these types, the helical gear reducers, which are comprised of gears with helical teeth and have several practical features, are the most commonly adopted form.

What types of helical gear reducers are there?

Now that we have known the gear reducers that are available with different forms, for the helical gear reducers themselves, they can be further narrowed down as three different types depending on how the helical gears are presented, including the single helical gears, double helical gears, and the herringbone gears.

● Single helical gears
This type can be recognized as the most common form that would be applied, which has only one single row of teeth in each gear. When two adjacent gears come in contact with each other, the contacting face would be the single row of teeth.

However, the narrow size of the helices refers to the more gears that can be set up and operated at the same time. In other words, inside the limited space of a gearbox, more gears can be arranged and overlapped together, which results in more load carrying capacity of this type.

● Double helical gears
The double helical gears have two rows of helical faces, with one gap that separates each helix. These two helices work with opposite helix angles at the same time, which broaden the contacting surfaces between every two gears.

Thus, the wider contacting surfaces would result in greater tooth overlap and smoother operation.

● Herringbone gears
The herringbone gears also have two rows of helical faces, but without the gap between each helix. This leads to the more complex manufacturing processes but reduced space that these gears may take up in the gearbox than the double helical ones, which make them more expensive but capable of withstanding the applications with high shock and vibration.

How does a helical gear reducer work?

As the first paragraph has mentioned, the helical gear reducer is part of the components in the transmission systems. In the transmission systems, the primary parts that are in charge of the transmission must be the motor, the gear reducer, and the operating parts of the related applications.

The transmission order in these systems is from the motor through the gear reducer to the operating parts. When the gear reducer receives the input, which is the electric energy, from the motor, it would multiply the torque as the gears interact with each other.

During the process, the torque, which refers to the transformed kinetic energy, is increased, and then the speed of the output, which is transmitted from the gear reducer to the operating parts, would be reduced accordingly.

Why use a helical gear reducer?

Compared to the other type of gear reducer that is also commonly adopted with the similar form as the helical one, the teeth of the helical gear reducer is angular, which results in the helical shape. This makes the smoother interaction between each gear, and thus causes less noise to be produced. The smoother the operation means the less likely that the helical gear reducer has to be repaired, and that’s the reason why this type of gear reducer is widely applied.

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