The "less is more" mantra is certainly a rallying cry in manufacturing. Technologies like multiaxis machining, 3D printing and automation are enabling companies to be more efficient, cost-conscious and flexible on the shop floor.

News about the newest products from the Gear Industry

News from Around the Gear Industry

The complete Product News section from the March/April 2015 issue of Gear Technology.

It has been documented that epicyclic gear stages provide high load capacity and compactness to gear drives. This paper will focus on analysis and design of epicyclic gear arrangements that provide extremely high gear ratios. Indeed, a special, two-stage planetary arrangement may utilize a gear ratio of over one hundred thousand to one. This paper presents an analysis of such uncommon gear drive arrangements and defines their major parameters, limitations, and gear ratio maximization approaches. It also demonstrates numerical examples, existing designs, and potential applications.

Our experts tackle the topic of measuring involute masters, including both master gears and gear inspection artifacts.

Our question this issue deals with high-ratio hypoid gears, and it should be noted here that this is a tricky area of gearing with a dearth of literature on the topic. That being the case, finding “experts” willing to stick their necks out and take on the subject was not a given.

This paper presents an approach that provides optimization of both gearbox kinematic arrangement and gear tooth geometry to achieve a high-density gear transmission. It introduces dimensionless gearbox volume functions that can be minimized by the internal gear ratio optimization. Different gearbox arrangements are analyzed to define a minimum of the volume functions. Application of asymmetric gear tooth profiles for power density maximization is also considered.

This article describes some of the most important tests for prototypes conducted at Winergy AG during the product development process. It will demonstrate that the measurement results on the test rig for load distribution are in accordance with the turbine measurements.