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.
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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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.
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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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E-Mobility is changing the gear market at an incredibly rapid pace. Software is adapting to meet these new challenges.
This article introduces the process of polish grinding of gears. Improved surface quality increases the overall efficiency of gearboxes, resulting in reduced friction and torque loss, higher power density, and noise-optimized gears (lower NVH); all these factors are highly relevant, especially for electric drives. When Reishauer developed polish grinding in 2012, the process aimed to improve the efficiency of ICE engine transmissions, and the set goals were easy to achieve. Today, in 2023, the situation is dramatically different. While an ICE engine operates at around 3,000 rpm and supplies acoustic masking of the gear noise, EV drivetrains feature up to 20,000 rpm and offer no such masking.
Different component characteristics in electric vehicles lead to higher noise and load requirements in the automotive industry. E-mobility—to a certain degree—is changing how gear analysis and inspection is carried out. Dissecting noise issues in gears and gearboxes requires an analytical approach like a detective. The problem could stem from the design itself, tolerancing or tip/root relief issues, tooth flank form deviations like waviness or perhaps crowning issues that directly impact noise. Every aspect of gear production needs to be examined to provide the most accurate results.
Furnaces North America 2022 (FNA 2022), presented by the Metal Treating Institute (MTI), in partnership with its media partner, Heat Treat Today, is the heat-treating industry’s go-to event every other year. FNA 2022 attracted attendees from across North America, including Fortune 500 companies. For three days attendees took part in networking, connections, and learning about the vast changes taking place in emerging technologies, industry trends, and advances in equipment.
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.
Productive Robotics sets the new standard for simplifying robotic automation. OB7 ensures simplicity in use and versatility, easy automation of existing production and new set-ups, increased output, consistency, and quality. It emphasizes teaching the robot rather than programming. Productive Robotics' OB7 collaborative robots are currently used in many diverse applications due to their simplicity, capability, and affordability.
ECM USA appointed Marco Möser to senior sales engineer for the western U.S. With more than 25 years of experience in the heat treatment industry, Möser brings extensive expertise in supporting OEMs on large-scale automotive programs.
Teradyne Robotics, the company behind Universal Robots (UR) and Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), will demonstrate how physical AI is transforming industrial automation at Automate 2026 in Chicago, June 22-25 at Booth #1250.
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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