Manufacturing bamboo spur gears and assessing dynamic performance

Abstract

This paper details the manufacturing and dynamic performance evaluation of bamboo spur gears utilizing bamboo powder. The research involved a comparison between the accuracy and dynamic performance of a bamboo gear and a POM gear. Initially, a disk-shaped preformed bamboo product was created and transformed into a gear using a gear hobbing machine. Subsequently, the gear's accuracy was assessed, and the dynamic gear testing machine was employed to measure gear temperature, generation noise, and wear volume. The bamboo gear produced in this study exhibited accuracy nearly equivalent to that of the injection-molded POM gear. The wear volume of the bamboo gear was reduced by elevating the molding temperature. Furthermore, the bamboo gear fabricated at 200 °C, under torque conditions of 0.5 Nm and 1.0 Nm, with a range of revolutions from 500 to 1500 rpm, demonstrated comparable performance in terms of temperature, noise, and wear to that of a POM gear. However, gears comprised entirely of bamboo powder proved incapable of withstanding a load torque of 1.5 Nm. This limitation stemmed from the fact that the flexural strength of POM was 90 MPa, whereas that of the bamboo powder molding product was 60 MPa. Therefore, when fabricating a bamboo gear using bamboo powder reinforced with bamboo fiber bundles, it withstood up to 10⁷ rotations even under a load torque of 1.5 Nm.