Hybrid Generative Gear Manufacturing (CRADA NFE-17-06744)

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Indiana Tool & Manufacturing Company, Inc. (ITAMCO) partnered to fabricate hybrid generative gears that are supposed to be 20% lighter than conventional gears without compromising strength and wear resistance. A two-pronged approach was taken to fabricate hybrid gears, the first one leveraged a design modification to deploy a mesh structure to reduce weight whereas the second approach involved fabricating the gears with a Ti64- B₄C composites for increased wear resistance. In the first approach, the gear material was a proprietary steel alloy, Ferrium C64^®, and the focus was to demonstrate weight reducing by leveraging additive manufacturing to deposit fine mesh structure. In the second case, the focus was on material development for gears fabricated via directed energy deposition (DED).