While Sandvik Coromant's tooling and machining solutions encompass a wide variety of metalworking industries, the focal point was recently on the gear industry at the company's Productivity Center, located in Schaumburg, Illinois just outside of Chicago. With its partner, Höfler Maschinenbau, Sandvik presented a one-day technology fair "Get Into Gear" that offered customers and clients hob milling demonstrations, innovations in gear machining and cost savings analysis.

"I'm not an economist," quipped presenter Jack Lynch, product manager at Sandvik, "but when you start looking at a savings of 51.53 percent with some of these solutions that's quite an impact on the overall production process."

Lynch, along with presenters like Kenneth Accavallo, industry and applications specialist at Sandvik and Ralf-Georg Eitel, president and CEO of Höfler American Corp, led a variety of discussions throughout the day on the advantages of Sandvik and Höfler products and services. Attendees were able to view machine tool demonstrations of Sandvik disc cutters and indexable hobs on Höfler and Mazak machines. In addition, AGMA President Joe Franklin presented an overview of gear industry trends and the advantages of being an AGMA member. 

With several top gear manufacturing personnel in attendance, the event was a remarkable success and gave Sandvik and Höfler an opportunity to show off their latest gizmos and gadgets prior to IMTS in September.

"With uP-Gear Technology the machine cost is no higher than a traditional five-axis machine and the tool cost is considerably lower than by using dedicated bevel gear tools. On top of this, the machining time is very short compared to an end mill process," Accavallo says. "Similarly, the Invomilling method offers high machining flexibility at high productivity levels and at low costs, using standard or standard-like tooling. These methods offer alternatives to existing solutions, so it will be interesting to see how this will influence the future of indexable cutting tools."