Maul-Konstruktionen GmbH

Business activities

Toothing calculation and gearbox design

If a toothing design is not yet fixed by the customer we define first which kind of toothing fits the best to fulfill all requirements. We know many variants of design and there is almost none which we did not use for our customers: spur gears, crown gears, worm gears, screw wheels, bevel gears, beveloid wheels or cycloidical toothing we design with the software KISSsoft. As a specialist for evoloid gears we are also able to design most of these various types with few teeth on one wheel.
During the design phase there are also many more variables than the type of toothing or the number of teeth: an easy spur gear pair for example can also be designed for good acoustic behaviour, high efficiency rate,cheap mass production, a low rate of reverse backlash or other aims of optimization.

Gearing simulation

Development and engineering in CAD

As CAD software we use a more or less updated version of Autodesk Inventor Professional. Additional to gearboxes, toothings, mechanims and Grippers and Solid body mechanics we also engineer your technical device, machinery or gadgets. We can design for example housings according to injection moulding or die casting needs. We also have numerous contacts to producers of all different kinds of production methods and various firms which are experts for plastic production, lubrication, electric motors and other topics. The mounting of assemlies and complex mechanims is explained and shown easiest by showing an explosion/implosion view film.

Explosion view of an assembly in Inventor

Acoustic analysis of drivetrains

In actuators as well as in power transmissions acoustics become more and more an issue. We can analyse and optimize your drivetrain with our measuring equipment and evaluation software with self-written python code according to noise behaviour. For this purpose we investigate the noise emergence and noise location of your gear with very sensitive measuring microfones and sound-level measuring devices. Frequency analysis of the emitted sound signal on several operating points combined with modal analysis in CAD and a good knowledge of toothing and motor give us the opportunity to identify and optimize emitting components and therefore reduce the sound level of gearboxes. Questions like: "where does the excitation come from?" What vibrates" Is a shift of the excitation or resonance frequency possible?" can be answered by our analysis. The results can directly be used in the acoustic optimization. By iterating measurements and optimizations we can offer the best solution regarding the sound level.

Example of acoustic analysis (please click to scale up)

Acoustic optimization of new and existing gears

Often our job is to optimize new or existing products, also known as NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness), especially in the automotive branch.
By our experience to noise reduction issues we are able to analyse the whole system including all surrounding parts (housing, bearings, ...) and especially the tooth engagement frequency and iniciate arrangements for damping, undocking and noise reduction.

Spectogram examle (please click to scale up)

Backlash optimization

With around 50 examples from seven groups our founder left us a collection of concepts of possible Mechanisms to compensate backlash. To settle tooth flank backlash there is not always one ideal solution. With our experience from projects in special machinery engineering, automotive projects and even kitchen devices, we have designed many concepts and can decide, which fits the best for your project.

Example of backlash free spur gears (please click to scale up)

Constructions with self-developed Excel-Tools

Over the years we programmed a variety of VBA based Excel-Tools: a tool for cycloid gears and acbar gears (including load calculation), a tool for strain wave gears, tools for compound planetary gears ("Wolfrom"; amongst others a tool to find the fitting teeth constellation), tools for planetary drives and also many smaller tools used for each project.

Additional to calculation of special toothings we use our own tools for designing of planetary gears, eccentric gears and grippers.

Calculation example (please click to scale up)

Dynamic simulation

We investigate with "Inventor Simulation Suite" the moveability, collisions and mountability of assemblies and identify the static and dynamics loads of parts and whole mechanisms. The data can be used as protocols and diagrams or can directly be used in FEM-analysis. Further examples of simulations: Exp. 1, Exp. 2, Exp. 3, Exp. 4, Exp. 5, Exp. 6.

FEM analysis

We investigate with "Inventor Simulation Suite" specific machinery parts and assemblies to identify tension, strain, excitations, resonance frequencies and many more. The results can be used and exported for dynamic simulation. Tension peaks are considered for geometrical optimization and resonance frequencies are considered for acoustic optimization.

Shift simulation

Documentations

Using MS-Office programs such as Word or Power-Point we can provide manuals, documentations, Excel calculations and Power-Point presentations. Results of our performance are often presented and delivered in .pdf-form.

Chainmodul

Chain eccentric gear

Chain-acbar-gear

Chain step gear