In January of this year we at Gear Technology got hip to the fact-in un-hip, belated fashion - that we needed a Blog Site and someone to do the blogging. Lucky for us, we already had that someone right here - in plain sight. That someone was Charles D. Schultz, P.E.

This back-to-basics article describes the main methods used for hardness testing of gears: Rockwell, Brinell, Vickers and Knoop.

Computer programs have been developed to completely design spur and helical gear shaper cutters starting from the specifications of the gear to be cut and the type of gear shaper to be used. The programs generate the working drawing of the cutter and, through the use of a precision plotter, generate enlarge scaled layouts of the gear as produced by the cutter and any other layouts needed for its manufacture.

The modern day requirement for precision finished hobbed gears, coupled with the high accuracy characteristics of modern CNC hobbing machines, demands high tool accuracy.