The metal powder industry gathered in force this past June for PowderMet 2010, the 2010 International Conference on Powder Metallurgy and Particulate Materials.

The complete Industry News section from the July 2010 issue of Gear Technology.

The powder metal (P/M) process is making inroads in automotive transmission applications due to substantially lower costs of P/M-steel components for high-volume production, as compared to wrought or forged steel parts. Although P/M gears are increasingly used in powered hand tools, gear pumps and as accessory components in automotive transmissions, P/M-steel gears are currently in limited use in vehicle transmission applications. The primary objective of this project was to develop high-strength P/M-steel gears with bending fatigue, impact resistance and pitting fatigue performance equivalent to current wrought steel gears.

Fuji's VTP-1000 is designed for highly accurate fine finishing of cylindrical components up to one meter in diameter.

Bore finishing system from Sunnen helps Cloyes Gear and Products achieve high accuracy, productivity and process capability.

Stringent NVH requirements, higher loads and the trend towards miniaturization to save weight and space are forcing transmission gear designers to increasingly tighten the surface finish, bore size and bore-to-face perpendicularity tolerances on the bores of transmission gears.

It’s happened to most manufacturers at one point or another. A defective product comes back from a customer in need of repair. Perhaps a bearing or a gear drive has failed, and the customer simply needs a replacement. Upon further examination, the company realizes it was never one of its products in the first place, but a fabricated copy that snuck into the market. The manufacturing community has been dealing with counterfeit products for decades, but used machinery dealers and Internet shoppers seem to continuously get hit by scam artists.

In this paper, the potential for geometrical cutting simulations - via penetration calculation to analyze and predict tool wear as well as to prolong tool life - is shown by means of gear finish hobbing. Typical profile angle deviations that occur with increasing tool wear are discussed. Finally, an approach is presented here to attain improved profile accuracy over the whole tool life of the finishing hob.

Easily one of the central issues affecting U.S. manufacturing is what one might call the exports deficit—the inability of American companies to sell products to, for instance, Asian markets, developing countries and other ports of call—due to what they perceive to be unfair trade agreements and or policies.

The machine element package by KISSsoft for the design and optimization of components like gears, shafts, bearings and others is now available in the new version 04/2010.