Design, Development and Analysis of a 3-Way Right Angle Bevel Gearbox

A gearbox is a mechanical device which helps in either increasing or decreasing the output speed of corresponding shaft. Although there are many commercially available gearbox's, most of them involved constant decrease in output gear speed ratio. A 3-way right angle bevel-gearbox was designed and developed to achieve increased gear ratio with two different rpm's at two output shafts. The present study of developing a 3-way right angle bevel-gearbox was undertaken as a sub-study in the development of a tractor powered manure pulverizer cum applicator in which gearbox is used to run pulverizer and applicator simultaneously (Jayan et al., 2017, Jegan and Jerry Vasanth, 2017, Patil and Munde, 2017). Three spur gears and two bevel gears were synchronously meshed to achieve different output rpm's at two output shafts. A laboratory model was developed and studied prior to developing a gearbox prototype. Model was evaluated at different input rpm's to note the increase in output rpm at the output shafts. Noise and vibration of the model was noted less at a input frequency of 18 Hz (540 rpm) corresponding to an output rpm of 1498 at both shafts. Input rpm to the gearbox prototype was varied between 300 to 540 rpm and the resultant change in application rate of manure pulverizer cum applicator was noted.