Spiral bevel gear

The so-called axial offset is the (usually driving ) pinion, the pinion - with unchanged size of the (usually driven ) ring gear - bigger or smaller depending on whether the axis offset is positive or negative. A positive axial offset not only has a diameter increase of the pinion result, but also an enlargement of the spiral angle and the overlap ratio. Thus, the smoothness and resilience while saving space increase. For these reasons, the hypoid drive is particularly suitable as a final drive in the differential gear for all motor vehicles in which the axis is driven by a cardan shaft ( propeller shaft ), this includes mainly vehicles with front engine and rear wheel drive (almost all trucks, some cars). Due to the axial offset the entire propeller shaft is placed deeper. This moves the center of the vehicle decreases slightly, and in the area of the underbody is more space, for example, to make the transmission tunnel flat or to use the space for the exhaust system.

In addition to the rolling movement of the teeth but arises as a consequence of the pinion offset also undesirable for gears sliding movement. This places increased demands on the material quality and usually requires gear oil with special additives (so-called hypoid oils ) for lubrication. The ring gear is in contrast to other gears not straight or helical, but arc gear teeth, whereby the production is also more expensive.