AGMA wants you to be involved in gear standards development. The creation of standards helps drive innovation and increase the market value of gear design and manufacturing—it also promotes international trade and commerce, which in turn fuels more innovation. The AGMA Gear Accuracy committee is in the early planning stages for a comprehensive review, and possible revision, of the standard ANSI/AGMA 2116, Evaluation of Double Flank Testers for Radial Composite Measurement of Gears, and we need your input. Committee meetings are a great place to network and collaborate with experts in the field, broaden your knowledge, capture technical expertise in writing, refine the standards you use and see how your influence helps shape best practices throughout America and around the world.

The condition and alignment of gear measuring instruments can greatly influence the measurement of production gears, and ANSI/AGMA 2116 provides evaluation methods of double flank testers used to evaluate radial composite deviations of gears, as specified in ANSI/AGMA/ISO 1328-2. Your frontline experience is essential to describe these procedures.

ANSI/AGMA 2116 was developed to work in tandem with the information sheet AGMA 935, Recommendations Relative to the Evaluation of Radial Composite Gear Double Flank Testers. ANSI/AGMA 2116 provides requirements, whereas AGMA 935 provides the recommended procedures for testing the inspection equipment for those requirements. In addition to a general update, the new project also aims combine the two documents into one, which will then be proposed to ISO as the foundation for a new ISO document on the subject matter. With the general update, the committee will ensure that ANSI/AGMA 2116 continues to provide the industry with the latest industry-accepted, state-of-the-art practices. Additional aims are to review how gauge repeatability and reproducibility are discussed for a dynamic system.

From a company perspective, being involved in standards development saves time and money in a variety of ways, including reduction of redundancy, improved quality, and safety, and better focusing of R&D resources. Also note that if your company’s not at the table helping to write the latest standards, the standards that affect your business will be written by your competitors. For the health of our industry, please reach out and make your experience a part of this living record.

Perhaps you are among the many gear shops that use double flank testers and potentially comprise the majority stakeholders in this project who stand to directly benefit the most from being a part of this work. In addition to user stakeholders of this equipment, we are especially looking for companies that manufacture and calibrate double flank testers. Interested stakeholders will be invited to a virtual meeting to determine the project scope, outline the project milestones, and assess the project feasibility. For more information and to be registered as an “interested stakeholder,” please contact the AGMA technical division at tech@agma.org before July 22.

For over 100 years, AGMA has been the facilitator for the development of American gear standards. For AGMA to make gear standards the best they can be, everyone in the industry needs to be involved. When AGMA standards-writing technical committees have open projects, they meet approximately six times per year for two-hour virtual meetings, and approximately once per year for a two-day in-person meeting.

Behind the scenes of almost every good and service, there are standards showing the industry how to make superior products. Standards provide a common language, document years of collective experience on proven and verified practices, and are the generally accepted rules, guidelines and requirements within an industry. In the United States, the stakeholders are in the driver’s seat of standards development. Those who will use, and are affected by, a proposed standard are the ones tasked with writing it. Standards development is a democratic, free and open process that requires consensus before publishing. After publication, a standard’s fate rests with customers and suppliers to mutually, and voluntarily, agree to adopt the standard.