AGMA hosted an EV Town Hall last month during their Motion + Power Technology Expo (MPT Expo). This event was planned to explicitly ask the question, “Is industry ready to roll up its sleeves and start the process of sharing common outcomes that will serve as the building blocks for standards for electric vehicle technology?” Spoiler Alert: The answer was a resounding, yes. And the discussion uncovered some key issues, and perhaps a surprise or two, that will help AGMA leverage its 107 years of experience in this space to start to frame future discussions for electric vehicle standards development.
Stock Drive Products/Sterling Instrument (SDP/SI), a Designatronics, Inc. company, completed and passed its recertification AS9100:D and ISO 9001:2015 quality system audit. The audit, conducted by Intertek over a 5-day period, certifies SDP/SI’s quality management system conforms to AS and ISO standards.
AGMA’s standards development process has been reorganized from a committee-based structure to a project-based format. This change means that AGMA will no longer have standing, topic-specific committees. Instead, project working groups will be formed to develop and deliver project-specific objectives. The group will be dissolved at the end of the project. The change will enable the AGMA’s Technical Division Executive Committee (TDEC) to pivot its resources in a timely manner to meet and address the ever-changing needs and challenges of the gearing industry.
The AGMA Technical Division informs of the publication of new documents by ISO Central: ISO 10300-1:2023, Calculation of load capacity of bevel gears — Part 1: Introduction and general influence factors; ISO 10300-2:2023, Calculation of load capacity of bevel gears — Part 2: Calculation of surface durability (macropitting); ISO 10300-3:2023, Calculation of load capacity of bevel gears — Part 3: Calculation of tooth root strength.
The American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) Technical Division Executive Committee, TDEC, announces a minor restructuring of AGMA technical committees to better serve the industry. The new structure will replace existing topic-specific committees with project-specific working groups that will be formed to develop the deliverable of each project.
For 107 years, AGMA has been the go-to place for gear standards. We have been bringing together engineers and leaders from across our industry to keep our standards updated and in line with new technologies. We started with noise issues on electric street cars in the early 1900s, and today we lead the global ISO TC 60 committee on standards including wind-turbine gear-box development. As new technologies and gear applications emerged, AGMA has gathered experts to discuss, brainstorm, share, and collaborate on the topics of the day such as plastic gears, epicyclic gears, marine gears, wind turbine gearboxes, and, of course, gear sets for internal combustion vehicles. We have also kept updated standards on gear accuracy, materials, and lubrication. This work has led to standards that reduce costs, improve quality, and make safer products for manufacturers and consumers worldwide.
The individual components that go into a power transmission system such as gears, bearings, shafts, seals, fasteners, housings, or lubricant, all affect one another. A small tweak to the design of one may require a cascade of other design changes throughout the system. Because of this, the gear engineer should have some knowledge of the design of components besides gears. To that point, for this month’s article, I’m taking a sidestep from writing about gears to give an update on bearings; components found in nearly every power transmission system.
AGMA is pleased to announce the publication of two new documents: ANSI/AGMA 1012-H23, Gear Nomenclature, Definition of Terms with Symbols, written by the AGMA Nomenclature Committee, and AGMA 947-A23, Gear Reducers—Thermal Capacity written by the AGMA Enclosed Drives for Industrial Applications Committee.
I’ve been seeing a lot of hype surrounding OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT-4 recently. Including acing standardized tests and writing college term papers in seconds. Each time I read about it, I wonder how it, or a future generation of artificial intelligence (AI), will be used in companies and particularly in my job. To answer my question there’s no better place to go than to ask ChatGPT-4 itself.
This month's issue of Gear Technology covers a subject engineers love to learn about from others but hate to learn about through firsthand experience: gear failure. In a broad sense, all engineering is concerned with failure. Eventually, all parts fail, so engineers need to determine the limits of their design and ensure that it will meet the requirements of the particular application.