By: S. Rao and D. McPherson, The Pennsylvania State University and G. Sroka, REM Chemicals, Inc.

Technical Papers and White Papers

In order to reduce costs by extending the operational life of the sun and input pinion gears of a helicopter transmission, scraped gears were subject to a superfinishing process. This process was found to remove minor foreign object damage by uniformly removing a minimal amount of material on the gear teeth, while meeting original manufacturing specifications for geometry. The process also resulted in enhanced surface quality and did not exhibit detrimental metallurgical effects on the surface or sub. surface of the teeth. The process was also found to eliminate gray staining, an early precursor to pitting. This paper describes the results of the helicopter gear repair project and includes the geometry and metallurgical evaluations on the repaired gear. Further effort to characterize the durability and strength characteristics of the repaired gear is ongoing.