Gear assembly

A gear assembly for transmission between two shafts having intersecting axes, one a drive shaft and the other a driven shaft, comprising:

• a. two meshing bevel gears, one mounted to said drive shaft and one to said driven shaft, each of said gears having coaxially disposed first and second toothed portions having the same pitch cone, the first and second toothed portions of each of said gears affixedly attached to each other forming together an integral toothed member, the teeth of the first toothed portion of each gear being cut at a first inclination angle and the teeth of the second toothed portion thereof being cut at a second inclination angle different from the first inclination angle, the first toothed portions of said gears having interengaging teeth and the second toothed portions of said gears having interengaging teeth thereby establishing a mating relationship between said gears whereby a driving relationship is established between said shafts, one of said gears being axially displaceable along its axis said first inclination angle B1 and said second inclination angle B2 being preselected such that:
• ##EQU2## Where:
• C=(tan.phi.).multidot.(tan .gamma.)
• and
• K=tan .beta.1+(C/cos .beta.1),
• W.sub.1 and W.sub.2 being the peripheral loads applied to the first toothed portion and to the second toothed portion respectively, .phi. being the normal tooth pressure angle, and .gamma. being the pitch angle of the floating gear;
• and
• b. preloading means engaging said displaceable gear for applying an axially directed load to said displaceable gear to urge said displaceable gear against said other gear while allowing said displaceable gear to float during operation.