The bevel gear add-in for F360 produces what I want but it is a trade off between graphic presentation and real gear form.
I also have often looked at the "pretty pictures" that these cad systems have produced and wondered just what the shape of the tooth is based on. Is it a true involute created from first principles, or is it part of an arc of a circle which just "looks right".

Also, I cannot figure out how you are going to machine a bevel gear with just three axes. (I will muse on it.........).

A previous post mentioned taking the cross section of a tooth and extending it forwards and back. Beware of this approach as the tooth surface shape changes along it's length.

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At the small end of the gear the involute tooth surface is generated from a small base circle diameter, whilst at the large end a larger BCD is used. You can see from the pic above that from the root outwards, the radius of curvature of the tooth surface is constantly changing up to the tooth tip. But this point radius of curvature changes from small end to large end also.

With a spur gear the involute shape can be machined onto a cutter (e.g. disk milling cutter to end mill) and the gear form cut with indexing from tooth to tooth. This approach won't work with a bevel.


Thought!
How good is CAD and/or CAM at "topological milling"?

If the gear is mounted with the PCD on the XY plane so it can be indexed per tooth, can the tooth space be roughed out and then finished with a ball ended cutter? It could be somewhat rough if at all possible.


Another way is

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Mount the gear as above but via a 4th axis on an inclined plane. Then the tooth can be generated with a straight sided cutter in successive passes whilst rotating the gear. The yellow in the pic is a rack relative to the two rotating gears. Therefore each tooth flank is conjugate to a straight sided cutter (e.g. 20 deg included angle end mill). Therefore this principal can be used to cut the tooth surface!

Hope this helps


PS

You are wanting to make a straight bevel not a spiral?

Martin