In order to diagnose the gear fault accurately, a mode based on variational mode decomposition (VMD)and minimum entropy deconvolution (MED) was proposed. Firstly, the number of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs)was set based on the kurtosis of the IMF included mesh frequency maxima principle. Secondly, the vibration signal of gear was decomposed into some IMFs by VMD, then the IMF included mesh frequency was selected as the sensitive component. Thirdly, the sensitive component was de-noised by MED. Finally, the fault was diagnosed by the envelope aptitude spectrum. The analysis of broken tooth of gear fault data shows that the method can realize the fault diagnosis effectively.