Driving Performance of Natural Fiber Gears Made From Only Bamboo Fibers Extracted With a Machining Center

The advantages of a plastic gear are that it is light and can be used without any lubricant, and its disadvantages are that its strength is low and it has large environmental impact. Therefore, the development of a new gear that maintains the advantages while negating the disadvantages has been proposed. The development of sustainable and reproducible natural materials is particularly desired to address environmental problems. Therefore, in this study, a method was devised to extract high quality and highly precise bamboo fibers using a machining center. Then, the hot press method was used to produce a spur gear, which is a machine element with a complicated shape. The present paper describes the characteristics of the bamboo fiber gears investigated through experiments. The results of tooth root strain measurement showed the relationship between rotation speed and tooth root strain. In addition, we calculated the theoretical value of tooth root strain and compared it with the experimental value. The experimental value was lower than the calculated value. The results of acceleration measurement showed that that tooth root strain is associated with acceleration.