Worm gear sets may be either single- or double-enveloping. In a single-enveloping set, the worm wheel is cut into a concave surface, thus partially enclosing the worm when meshed. The double enveloping worm gear is similar to the single-enveloping gear; however, the worm envelopes the worm gear. Thus both are throated. The double-enveloping worm gear has more of the tooth surface in contact than the single-enveloping worm gear. The larger contact area increases the load-carrying capacity. For this reason, double-enveloping worm gearing is widely applied in heavy-duty machinery, for applications including construction and metallurgy. In this paper, we designed a compact reduction gear that is highly efficient using double-enveloping worm gears. We calculated the bearing load in the worm gearing to select the bearing and the housing surface area according to the recommended values from AGMA(American Gear Manufacturers Association). The finite element method was used to assess the structural integrity.
