Hunting Tooth Gear Sets
The so-called “Hunting Tooth Gear Set” is a gear set whose tooth counts are relatively prime; in other words, they have no common factors. This is the best configuration for gears, since any tooth on either gear will contact every tooth on the other gear before encountering the same tooth. This spreads the wear evenly over all the gear teeth, increasing the life of the gearbox.
The hunting tooth frequency of a pair of gears is the gear mesh frequency divided by the least common multiple of the numbers of teeth on the two gears. The least common multiple is often just the product of the numbers of teeth. In some gearboxes, the hunting tooth frequency will appear in the vibration spectrum, and if so, it should be trended over time because rapid wear usually results under these conditions.
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