Abstract: A method disclosed]for balancing the fan rotor (10) of a turbine engine having a hub (12) with blades (16) extending radially therefrom includes the steps of determining (30) a penalty associated with each possible unique blade arrangement in which a limited number of blades is relocated from their initially assigned locations on the hub to new target locations. A subset of these arrangements is selected (34), the subset members being the arrangements having the lowest penalties. For each member of the subset, the penalty determination (36) is made for each possible unique blade arrangement in which a limited number of blades is relocated from their initial locations in each subset member to new target locations. If these latter penalty determinations identify an arrangement having a penalty less than that of any arrangement in the subset, the subset selection (34) and penalty determination steps (36) are repeated until no further reduction in penalty is observed.

Abstract: The ends of gear teeth are chamfered using an arcuate motion cutter having a complex cross sectional shape. In an improvement of the prior trial and error techniques, the cutter shape is made correctly the first time using an algorithm which includes determining certain s-dimensions produced on a chamfer by a set of tool dimensions; comparing these to the desired maximum, minimum and nominal chamfer widths, and; then iteratively optimizing the set of tool dimensions to minimize the differences.