There has been renewed discussion of the “Buy American” mandates recently. AGMA has a long history on this topic and succe...
An online forum I occasionally visit recently posted a photo of a vintage drafting board and joked about younger people no...
One of the pleasures of being Gear Technology’s official blogger is receiving the occasional phone call or e-mail...
One of the cardinal rules of design engineering is that you will never overcome physics.
Making great products is a team effort. It annoys me when the host of a certain house remodeling show claims credit for how wonderful her project t...
Gears are wonderful things. Unfortunately, they require support from shafts, bearings, and some sort of housing to be useful.
In the last blog posting, I covered the importance of developing a Product Specification and getting all the “stakeholders” to agree on what a succ...
Once you have an idea what your device will look like, the urge to start designing is strong.
As mentioned in my last posting, blank sheets of paper present a huge challenge to any machinery designer.
Today’s title does not refer to writer’s block. After 660 contributions to the magazine and blog, I still have a few things to cover ahead of my pl...
Before we move on from helix angle restrictions, I want to say a few things about face contact ratio.
Some of you are probably calling forth the gear deities to smite me for promoting a “free thinking” approach to helix angles; I understand completely. As with the mispronunciation of “helical,” tolerance is not just a technical term to argue about at a non-conforming material review.
Regular followers of this blog know whenever I say “it all depends,” that I am compelled to credit industry legend Ray Drago for stealing his catchphrase.
We left the gear tribe arguing over how to solve the problems that were cropping up with the new-fangled double helical or herringbone designs.
When we cannot even agree how to pronounce “helical” it should not be a surprise that there is so much confusion about “proper” limits on helix angles.
Writers are often advised to “write about what you know.” My recent postings on recruitment, employee development, and fitting in was informed by almost fifty years in the gear trade at seven different shops and my consulting firm.
[By now readers of this blog are aware of my interest in gear trade history. The more I learn about how we got to this point in our understanding of gears, the more I want to know. Part of what I miss about going into the office every day is the opportunity to talk about gears with others; hence the motivation for writing this blog.
Contact | Privacy Policy
©2026 Power Transmission Engineering
