Bevel gear Introduction

Two important concepts in gearing are pitch surface and pitch angle. The pitch surface of a gear is the imaginary toothless surface that you would have by averaging out the peaks and valleys of the individual teeth. The pitch surface of an ordinary gear is the shape of a cylinder. The pitch angle of a gear is the angle between the face of the pitch surface and the axis.

The most familiar kinds of bevel gears have pitch angles of less than 90 degrees and therefore are cone-shaped. This type of bevel gear is called external because the gear teeth point outward. The pitch surfaces of meshed external bevel gears are coaxial with the gear shafts; the apexes of the two surfaces are at the point of intersection of the shaft axes.

Bevel gears that have pitch angles of greater than ninety degrees have teeth that point inward and are called internal bevel gears.

Bevel gears that have pitch angles of exactly 90 degrees have teeth that point outward parallel with the axis and resemble the points on a crown. That's why this type of bevel gear is called a crown gear.

Miter gears are mating bevel gears with equal numbers of teeth and with axes at right angles.

Skew bevel gears are those for which the corresponding crown gear has teeth that are straight and oblique.