When I first met the leaders of
the gearing industry in April 2016
at AGMA's 100th Anniversary
Celebration, I did my best imitation
of Joe Namath, who famously
predicted a Super Bowl victory for
his New York Jets: I guaranteed we
would reach our 101st year!
More than 100 years ago, gear
manufacturers were facing
a significant challenge from
industry. The incredible advances in
industrialization and transportation that
occurred at the turn of the 20th century
resulted in incredible growth for gear
makers, but there were significant technical
issues. "The lack of process and product
standardization was a continuing
problem in all U.S. industry. The lack
of industry-wide gear standards meant
there were no standard gear tooth sizes,
ratings, quality definition or consistent
manufacturing methods" (Celebrating
100 Years of Gearing, pg. 22).
No, not that president! I mean Matt Croson, the new president
of the American Gear Manufacturers Association, who
started in June and has been busy getting to know the gear
industry and AGMA's members.
While the two have taught a variety of AGMA courses over
the years, without question their most popular courses are
Gear Failure Analysis (Errichello with longtime colleague Jane
Muller) and Gearbox CSI: Forensic Analysis of Gear & Bearing
Failures (Drago). Drago currently teaches Manufacturing &
Inspection (with AGMA instructor Joseph W. Lenski, Jr.) and
Gearbox System Design: The Rest of the Story - Everything but
the Gears and Bearings (with AGMA instructor Steve Cymbala)
as well.
I'd like to apologize to the dedicated people working on revisions to the AGMA 925 standard and the Technical Report ISO 15144-1, both of which deal with the issue of micropitting. In the
March/April issue of Gear Technology, we published an opinion piece in our Voices column that harshly criticized the methods for predicting micropitting outlined in ISO 15144-1.
This is a very exciting year for AGMA as the organization celebrates its 100-year anniversary. In addition to the anniversary, AGMA President Joe Franklin, jr., who has done an outstanding job at the
helm of AGMA for the last 25 years,
will retire, and we welcome in our new
AGMA President, Matt Croson, who will
lead us into the next 100 years. The centennial kicked off in October with a dinner at the AGMA Gear Expo in Detroit and will continue throughout 2016 with a number of exciting events scheduled to celebrate this milestone anniversary.
AGMA President Joe Franklin is stepping down after some 24 years on the job. He graciously took the time to answer some questions from Gear Technology Senior Editor Jack McGuinn regarding his tenure.