"Competitiveness" is the newest corporate buzzword. It is being offered as the solution to all our economic problems. Newspapers, magazines and legislation are pushing us to be more "competitive."
Circular arc helical gears have been proposed by Wildhaber and Novikov (Wildhaber-Novikov gears). These types of gears became very popular in the sixties, and many authors in Russia, Germany, Japan and the People's Republic of China made valuable contributions to this area. The history of their researches can be the subject of a special investigation, and the authors understand that their references cover only a very small part of the bibliography on this topic.
A pair of spur gears generally has an effective lead error which is caused, not only by manufacturing and assembling errors, but also by the deformations of shafts, bearings and housings due to the transmitted load. The longitudinal load distribution on a contact line of the teeth of the gears is not uniform because of the effective lead error.
The last decade has been a period of
far-reaching change for the metal working industry. The effect of higher lubricant costs, technical advances in machine design and increasing competition are making it essential that manufacturers of gears pay more attention to testing, selecting and controlling cutting fluid systems. Lubricant costs are not a large
percentage of the process cost relative to items such as raw materials, equipment and labor, and this small relative cost has tended to reduce the economic incentive to evaluate and to change cutting fluids.
For the last few years, the market has been tough for the U.S. gear industry. That statement will cause no one any surprise. The debate is about what to do. One sure sign of this is the enormous attention Congress and the federal government are now placing on "competitiveness."
In the May/June Issue of your excellent magazine. Mr. Stan Jakuba discusses a serious problem, not only for the gear industry, but any machinery where fluctuating torque is encountered.
I would like to make the following comments to his article...
