Manufacture of Bamboo Spur Gear and the Dynamic Performance

Abstract This paper describes the manufacture of bamboo spur gears using bamboo powder and their dynamic performance. This research was compared the accuracy and dynamic performance of the bamboo gear and POM gear. At first, a disk-shaped preformed bamboo product was fabricated, then the product was manufactured into the gear using the gear hobbing machine. Next, the accuracy of the gear was measured, finally, generation noise, temperature of gear, and volume of wear were measured by using dynamic gear testing machine. As results, the accuracy of bamboo gear produced by method in this research was near to injection molded POM gear. The bamboo gear was showed that volume of wear is reduced by an increase in molding temperature. Moreover, the bamboo gear fabricated at 200 °C, under the condition of torque 0.5 Nm and 1.0Nm and number of revolutions from 500 rpm to 1500 rpm showed clearly that temperature, noise and wear have performance equivalent to POM gear as dynamic performance. However, the gear made from 100% bamboo powder could not withstand the load torque of 1.5Nm. It was considered that this is because the flexural strength of POM is 90MPa, while that of bamboo powder molding product is 60MPa. Therefore, when a bamboo gear using bamboo powder reinforced by bamboo fiber bundles was fabricated, it withstood up to 107 rotations even at a load torque of 1.5 Nm.