Around the corner from my home in Tyler, TX, the Liberty Theater is screening Metropolis. Fritz Lang set his dystopian epic in the year 2026, and now that the calendar has caught up, the film is making the rounds again. Nearly a century ago, Lang imagined this year as an industrial future defined by towering skylines, vast machinery, rigid class division, and workers reduced to components in a system too large to comprehend.
20NiMo9-7 alloy achieves up to 48 percent higher fatigue strength than conventional carburizing steels in the as-carburized condition, eliminating the need for shot peening and grinding in automotive gear applications.
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.
Profile grinding is the hard-finishing process of choice for large gears with demanding requirements regarding load transmission, running smoothness, and complex tooth modifications. No other hard-finishing process offers a comparable level of flexibility across such a wide range of applications. Profile grinding can be applied to very small as well as very large gears, to external and internal gearing, to involute and non-involute tooth forms, to components with and without interfering contours, and to both simple and highly complex tooth modifications. Furthermore, profile grinding allows the achievement of excellent quality levels that cannot be attained by any other hard-finishing process over this broad application range.
High-volume holemaking in gear production demands not only speed and efficiency but also precision and reliability, particularly when working with critical components such as gearbox housings and gear blanks. These parts often require tightly toleranced holes that must be perfectly aligned to ensure proper assembly, load transfer, and long-term durability. For manufacturers, achieving these standards while maintaining cost-effectiveness is an ongoing challenge.
Heat treatment decisions for gears are often reduced to a surface hardness number. That shortcut can work for mild duty, but it frequently breaks down when contact fatigue, scuffing risk, shock events, distortion limits, or finishing constraints become dominant. Many late-stage issues trace back to the same pattern: the duty case is incompletely defined, the process window is underestimated, or verification confirms “a number” without proving the full property profile.
Logistics, transportation and maintenance have always been critical challenges in wind turbines. There’s truth to the notion that large components can cause bigger headaches on their massive size and scope alone. A smaller, compact drive solution can help eliminate today’s renewable energy challenges while reducing costs.
At the last Technical Division Executive Committee (TDEC) meeting, beyond reviewing all the excellent Fall Technical Meeting track 1 abstracts, the committee was busy approving three new projects:
In February, I had the privilege of being invited to speak on a panel at the Additive Manufacturing Strategies (AMS) conference in New York City. AMS is a three-day, in-person event that brings together leaders from across the additive manufacturing space, including investors, OEMs, researchers, and end-users. I was honored to represent MPMA and the motion and power transmission community in a room full of people who live and breathe this technology every day.
If you’re a parent with kids at home you’ve likely suffered through a 20-minute conversation of unusual phrases and offbeat acronyms that sound like an alien dialect. If you have three or more kids talking in the back seat of your car you may wonder—as I often do—can I hire a translator or AI Assistant to figure out exactly what these weirdos are talking about?
Weiler Abrasives announced the new Tiger 3D MAX Ceramic flap discs and blending discs, which are products built for maximum material removal, durability and consistency. This expansion of the 3D MAX lineup brings advanced precision-shaped grain technology to a wider range of grinding applications.
Hainbuch has expanded its Maxxos family of mandrels with the Maxxos T-212, a next-generation ID clamping solution engineered around a powerful idea: geometry creates rigidity.
Mass Finishing Inc. (MFI) will unveil its new HZ-6 compact, centrifugal barrel-tumbler finishing machine at the RAPID + TCT 2026 event April 14-16 at the Thomas M. Menino Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston, Massachusetts. At Booth #2033, visitors will learn how this new system reduces labor costs, decreases production times and frees up valuable floorspace. The compact finishing machine removes both surface roughness and scale simultaneously to consistently generate mirror-like finishes on 3D printed metal parts.
At Mobile World Congress 2026, Siemens announced a cybersecurity solution for industrial private 5G Networks in collaboration with Palo Alto Networks. The solution combines Siemens' Private 5G infrastructure with Palo Alto Networks' Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), specifically optimized for AI.
As cost pressure increases, manufacturers are being challenged not only to manage higher prices but also to rethink how cutting tools are designed, used and replaced. Tungaloy is addressing this challenge through tool architecture. The company emphasized using exchangeable-head solid carbide systems that reduce material consumption and environmental impact while achieving high machining performance.
Kuka Robotics announced a new addition to its product portfolio with the KR Titan ultra robot. Designed for load intensive automation applications, the robot combines extensive reach with precise dynamics ideal manufacturers the automotive, battery/electromobility, and large part handling, as well as heavy logistics sectors.
Modern precision tools are created through the perfect interaction of the entire grinding process chain—from the machine, software, grinding wheel and clamping technology to the cooling
lubricant. Clean, temperature-stable cooling lubricant microfiltration forms the basis for consistent quality, efficient processes, and sustainable manufacturing.
The gear industry has lost one of its most respected figures. Robert Errichello, founder of GEARTECH and a leading authority on gear design, failure analysis, and tribology, has passed away. He was 84. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, Bob made contributions to gear engineering and standards development that will endure for generations.
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