A S K T H E E X P E R T

Got a Gear Question?

Welcome back to Gear Technology’s Ask the Expert—a regular
feature intended to help designers, specifiers, quality assurance and
Ask the Expert!
inspection personnel in addressing some of the more complex, trouble-
some gearing challenges that never cease to materialize—whether on
the drafting table or the shop floor. Simply e-mail your question—
along with your name, job title and company name (if you wish to
remain anonymous, no problem)—to: jmcguinn@geartechnology.com;
or, you can submit your question by visiting geartechnology.com.

QUESTION #1
Profile Shift
Regarding profile shift: What kind of data must be considered when we grind a gear
with shift profile?
A few days ago we received a series of gears that need to be corrected (profile shift).
Our engineering department had a question about this topic; they tell me that they do
not know how to calculate the gears with profile shift and that they have big doubts
over whether—with each profile shift factor—the pressure angle also changes.
A friend in Texas told me that you cannot make a profile shift gear with a cutter
in a traditional way. For each correction factor, you require a cutter according to the
modification. Is this is correct?
ing. david ruiz, production manager
Grupo Meusnier S.A. de C.V.

Dear David,
One of the most important parameters in any gear design
AGMA 913–A98—Method for Specifying the Geometry is the number of teeth in the pinion, and profile shift has its
of Spur and Helical Gears—gives all the equations you need greatest relevance when the pinion has a small number of
for calculating profile shift. teeth. In fact, the first use of profile shift was to avoid under-
The reference pressure angle measured on the generating cut in pinions with less than 17 teeth. It was later realized
pitch diameter (the same as the standard pitch diameter or that profile shift improves most aspects of gear operation,
reference pitch diameter) is determined by the cutter pressure and today it is used for many reasons including:
angle and is usually 20° for most gears. It is independent of • Avoiding undercut
profile shift. The operating pressure angle is determined by • Avoiding narrow top-lands to avoid case/core separation in
the operating center distance of the mating gears and is again carburized gears
independent of the profile shift. • Balancing specific sliding to maximize wear resistance and
You can think of profile shift as simply shifting the teeth Hertzian fatigue resistance
outward or inward so that the active profile of the teeth uses • Balancing flash temperature to maximize scuffing resis-
a different sector of the same involute curve. tance
Profile shift does not require special cutters if straight- • Balancing bending fatigue life to maximize bending
sided hobs are used (the usual case). The hob is simply fatigue resistance
shifted outward or inward to shift the profiles, and the outer
diameters of the gears are changed to accommodate the pro- Gears with few teeth are more sensitive to profile shift,
file shifts. Therefore, the advantages of profile shifting are and their tooth shape changes more dramatically, whereas
achieved with no cost consequences. Only form cutting such profile shift changes tooth shape only slightly for gears with
as milling requires a different cutter for profile shifted gears. a lot of teeth. In fact, the teeth of a rack (with theoretically
That’s because form-cutting or form-grinding require a cutter infinite number of teeth) do not change shape as the teeth
or grinding wheel with a profile that matches the shape of the are profile shifted. These effects can be seen in Figure 4 of
tooth space. Since profile shifting changes the shape of the AGMA 918–A98. It’s best to design gear sets with pinions
tooth space, the shape of the form cutter must change. with at least 20 teeth—and preferably 25—in which case the

46 GEARTECHNOLOGY August 2012 www.geartechnology.com

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 A S K T H E E X P E R T
profile shifts for balanced specific sliding, balanced flash
temperature and balanced bending fatigue life are all nearly
the same.
See AGMA 901–A92—A Rational Procedure for the
Preliminary Design of Minimum-Volume Gears—for a
method to design gears with maximum-load capacity by bal-
ancing the macropitting resistance and the bending fatigue
resistance.
Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate how profile shift dramatically
improves specific sliding. Figure 1 shows the specific sliding
for a gear set with no profile shift. Figure 2 shows the same
gear set after the pinion and gear have profile shifts designed
to balance and minimize the specific sliding. Profile shifting
has greatly reduced the specific sliding from -4.03 to -1.28.
This improves the meshing characteristics of the gear set by
reducing the frictional loss, lowering the contact temperature
and increasing the resistance to wear, macropitting, micropit-
ting and scuffing.
Robert L. Errichello, a longtime
Gear Technology technical editor,
is owner-operator of Geartech—a
Figure 1—Profile shift for external and internal gears, as defined by
gear industry consultancy. Bob also ISO 21771:2007. Gears: Cylindrical Involute Gears and Gear Pairs—
is a current member of the AGMA Concepts and Geometry.
Nomenclature, Helical Gear Rating,
Epicyclic Enclosed Drives and Wind
Turbine committees.

Dear David,
Profile shift—sometimes known as ‘addendum modifica-
tion’ or ‘correction’—is the displacement of the basic rack
(or cutting tool) datum line from the reference diameter of
the gear. The size of the profile shift (mm or inches) is usual-
ly made to be non-dimensional by dividing it by the normal
module (or multiplying by the DP), and it is then defined
by the profile shift coefficient ‘x’. A positive profile shift
increases the tooth thickness while a negative profile shift
reduces tooth thickness (this applies to internal and external
gears alike). This is illustrated in Figure 1, which is copied
from ISO 21771:2007, i.e., Gears: Cylindrical Involute
Gears and Gear Pairs—Concepts and Geometry.
The only difference in machine setup required for cut- Figure 2—Example geometry software package with graphical
ting profile shifted gears is to change the radial position of display illustrating the effect of profile shift (addendum modification)
the cutting tool by an amount defined by the profile shift. on tooth shape and operating pressure angle.
The cutting tool module or DP, cutting tool pressure angle
and number of teeth on change gears on manual machines, or backlash. In fact all gears have some profile shift when
remain unchanged. This in turn means the base diameter you consider that we normally move the cutting tool radially
(and base helix angle on helical gears) remain the same. A to change the tooth thickness.
key benefit from using involute gears is that we don’t need A common perception is that profile shift changes the
to change the cutting tool to make gears with a different ‘pressure angle’ of a gear.
diameter and tooth thickness. This is wrong.
Profile shift is used by designers for many reasons includ- The pressure angle we specify on the drawing is the pres-
ing the elimination of undercut when hobbing or shaping sure angle of the cutting tool. The actual gear flank pressure
gears with few teeth, minimizing sliding at the gear pair start angle changes from root to tip and the working pressure
of active profile, increasing bending strength, increasing or angle (the angle of the line of contact) of a gear pair depends
decreasing the center distance and changing tooth thickness on gear center distance and gear base diameters only. If

48 GEARTECHNOLOGY August 2012 www.geartechnology.com

the sum of the pinion and wheel profile shift is zero, the
gears operate at the reference center distance. If this sum
is negative the gears have smaller center distance and thus
they have a smaller operating pressure angle, while a posi-
tive sum requires a larger center distance increased operating
pressure angle.
For further information on this subject I recommend
a document published by British Standard PD 6457—
Addendum Modification to Involute Spur and Helical Gears,
and also ISO 21771:2007, published by ISO. These refer-
ences contain the calculations and recommendations for
minimum profile shift to avoid undercutting and maximum
profile shift that can be applied before the tooth crest thick-
ness become too thin. Most commercial software packages
provide options for specifying profile shift; the effects can be
demonstrated graphically and improvements in gear perfor-
mance can be quantified, as seen in Figure 2.
D r. R o b e r t F r a z e r , a G e a r
Technology technical paper contrib-
utor, heads the U.K. National Gear
Metrology Laboratory and as such is
responsible for gear design and anal-
ysis within The Design Unit at the
University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
Rob is also actively involved with
delivering the British Gear Association (BGA) training semi-
nar program and is an active member of the AGMA Gear
Accuracy and Calibration committees.

Dear David,
Profile shift, also known as x factor, is just a method for
specifying tooth thickness. If the gear drawing has a “mea-
surement over pins” or “span over a given number of teeth”
or other tooth thickness specification that you are familiar
with, you can just grind the gear to meet the specified tooth
thickness and safely ignore the profile shift.
Many of those familiar with profile shift find it very easy
to use during the design of a gear pair. However, the result-
ing gear is not fundamentally different from one designed by
other methods. Cutters do not need to be modified to create
gears with different amounts of profile shift.
The concept of profile shift is quite simple: as a gear cutter
is shifted radially towards the center of an external gear, the
tooth profile will of course also be shifted towards the gear
center. At a given diameter, such a shift of the tooth profile
results in the teeth appearing thinner. Since the actual pres-
sure angle varies with diameter, a shift in the profile changes
the pressure angle at a given diameter. But this change in
pressure angle does not mean there was a change in tooling;
it is the natural result of sinking a given tool deeper into the
part.
The symbol for profile shift is x, and it is a coefficient; i.e.,
it is normalized so it is non-dimensional. The sign conven-
tion for profile shift is that a positive profile shift results in
thicker teeth. So shifting a cutter towards the center of an

www.geartechnology.com August 2012 GEARTECHNOLOGY 49

 A S K T H E E X P E R T
external gear is a negative profile shift, since it makes the
teeth thinner.
The profile shift usually used by gear designers is for
a zero backlash gearset. To provide some backlash, some
designers increase center distance while others reduce the
profile shift. When you subtract an additional small shift as a
backlash allowance from the non-dimensional zero backlash
profile shift, and multiply by module to get millimeters, the
result is called the “rack shift.”
In Europe, some gear designers specify only the zero
backlash profile shift and the manufacturer will thin the teeth
according to tables in the DIN standards. If you receive such
a drawing that does not specify an actual measurement of the
finished gear teeth, then you should discuss with your cus-
tomer what is actually expected.
For more information, see AGMA 913–A98. This informa-
tion sheet was written to introduce profile shift to engineers
in the United States. There are also many computer pro-
grams, such as AGMA’s Gear Rating Suite, that will allow
you to easily convert from profile shift to other forms of
tooth thickness specification.
John M. Rinaldo, senior develop-
ment engineer at New York-located
Atlas Copco Comptec LLC, is also
a current member of the AGMA
Computer Programming (vice-chair),
Nomenclature, Gear Accuracy (vice-
chair) and Helical Enclosed Drives
High-Speed Units committees.

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GEAR-RELATED
QUESTION?

Send it to Jack McGuinn,

senior editor, at jmcguinn@
geartechnology.com, or visit
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