In heavy industry, gears rarely fail in the dramatic way people imagine. More often, there is no broken tooth, no immediate seizure, and no single event that clearly marks the beginning of the problem. What appears to be a healthy gear may already be operating with edge loading, unstable lubrication film, progressive surface fatigue, or overload at the tooth root. By the time visible damage becomes obvious, the failure mechanism has usually been active for some time.
Water spray quenching achieves heat transfer coefficients up to 4,000 W/(m²K)—nearly double conventional oil quenching rates—enabling potential material substitution and tailored quench intensity for complex gear components.
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This study systematically evaluates how material selection, progressive wear, and grease lubrication affect the noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) performance of polymer gears, providing new insights for designing quieter, more optimized transmission systems.
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This study investigates how manufacturing-related geometry deviations in the tooth root area affect gear bending strength calculations, demonstrating that accounting for measured tooth contours rather than nominal geometries is essential for accurate material comparisons in fatigue testing.
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An excerpt from Gear Technology Solutions by Dr. Hermann J. Stadtfeld exploring the mathematics behind conjugate bevel and hypoid gears—from the fundamental laws of gearing and the conditions for perfect conjugacy to why real-world power transmissions require deliberate crowning rather than theoretically exact conjugate designs.
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Mechanical power loss in gears is generated through sliding and rolling of the contact resulting in frictional work and elastic hysteresis generation of heat. This action is both a parasitic loss of energy from the drivetrain and a source of engineering costs to control system temperature to avoid heat-related failures of the gearbox components. Therefore, from both a cost and durability standpoint it is of great interest to minimize the frictional losses at the gear tooth contact interface.
When grinding steel parts, the surface of the part can "burn" if too much heat is applied in a short time. Grinding burn refers to all those structural changes in edge zones of steel parts that are caused by grinding processes in steels due to the thermal energy introduced. Grinding burn can mainly occur in the form of tempering zones or new hardening zones.
A combination of international regulations and consumer expectations is driving the demand for reduced noise on all drivetrain components. Further demand is driven by the growing trend towards EVs and HEVs, where noise from ICE is intermittent or no longer present, and the contribution of transmission noise to overall vehicle noise becomes dominant.
Press quenching is a tried-and-true process for the controlled hardening of flat, circular close tolerance parts. The process ensures good dimensional control and uniform hardening, thus allowing for seamless processing post heat treatment.
Gleason's Closed Loop System with robot or cobot loading now fully automates the measurement and correction process in gear production. Automatically prompting corrections on connected production machines, the GMSP series not only reduces human error in repetitive tasks, it also increases utilization of inspection equipment up to 90%.
TfG’s RGC 350 Radial Chamfering Machine from Machine Tool Builders produces defined, reproducible chamfers and ‘perfect’ teeth every time. The continuous, high-speed cutting process works wonders even on workpieces with interfering contours. What used to be slow, painful and expensive is now fast, painless, and perfect.
Deburring gears is dusty, repetitive, and hard to staff. The OB7 cobot from Productive Robotics automates it with quick setup and no programming required. Consistent finish on every part, built in the USA. See the full cobot deburring package and request a quote.
Download the whitepaper to learn how lifecycle management improves tool performance, reduces downtime, and drives measurable cost savings.
This white paper explores how the use of an automatic tool change system can boost productivity in the grinding process. When manufacturing large gears, the demands regarding surface quality of the ground tooth flanks are increasing.
The Horsburgh & Scott engineering team has over 135 years of experience designing, manufacturing and maintaining gearboxes in heavy-duty applications around the world. They have proven design standards for gearboxes up to 5,000 hp and 4 million ft-lbs. with speeds from 0.5 to 3,600 rpm. If they don’t have a standard gearbox to meet customer's needs, they can design a custom gearbox for a specific application.
Under the umbrella of Aiktec – Digital Solutions, Klingelnberg brings together smart, industry-ready applications that bring the concepts of Industry 4.0 and the IoT directly to the shop floor. Smart Tracing is a web-based software solution for analyzing machine behavior. It is essentially the Klingelnberg DDQM (Data-Driven Quality Management) for any CNC machine, regardless of the manufacturer. Relevant process and performance information from the CNC machine is uploaded in the form of servo traces and managed and analyzed via a simple browser application.
Index Corp. will present manufacturers with a variety of strategies to streamline production at IMTS 2026, taking place September 14-19 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. Visitors to the company’s Booth #339119 in the South Building will witness the North American debut of multiple new machines, including an entirely new design concept tailored to small part production. The company will also demonstrate its full portfolio of proven advanced machine technologies, as well as provide insight into how manufacturers can produce every job faster to maximize profitability.
Sep 22, 2026 - Sep 23, 2026
The RPM (Reliability Process & Maintenance) Symposium (Kalamazoo, MI) is a conference event where end users can network and learn about industrial facilities, reliability, maintenance best practices, electric motor driven powertrains, and IIoT.
Jul 29, 2026 - Jul 30, 2026
Sep 22, 2026 - Sep 24, 2026
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