One of the reasons I strongly advocate for “promoting from within” is that many recruitments fail. Real life is not Star Trek, your compan...

Our most recent guest blogger, Joe Arvin, demonstrates the importance of the personal touch in business. As I mentioned in my introduction to his s...

Continuing our discussion of veteran machine tools, it occurs to me that many of our younger readers may not be aware that the United States was on...

Induction hardening is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to thermochemical diffusion processes such as carburizing, and as it does so, manufacturers are on a never-ending quest to expand the scope of what's possible with the technology.

I would like some instructions for setting the degrees and minutes on a Liebherr or Barber Colman hob. Our machines use a Vernier scale to match the lead angle of the cutter to the part to form straight teeth. There is a dispute on how to do this task, and I wanted insight from another professional.

Contact fatigue and bending fatigue are two main failure modes of steel gears, while surface pitting and spalling are two common contact fatigue failures -- caused by alternating subsurface shear stresses from the contact load between two gear mates. And when a gear is in service under cyclic load, concentrated bending stresses exist at the root fillet -- the main driver of bending fatigue failures. Induction hardening is becoming an increasingly popular response to these problems, due to its process consistency, reduced energy consumption, clean environment and improved product quality -- but not without issues of its own (irregular residual stresses and bending fatigue). Thus a new approach is proposed here that flexibly controls the magnitude of residual stress in the regions of root fillet and tooth flank by pre-heating prior to induction hardening. Using an external spur gear made of AISI 4340 as an example, this new concept/process is demonstrated using finite element modeling and DANTE commercial software.

[starbox] No, I am not launching a criminal investigation. The title of this posting summarizes my ongoing study of the history of gear ratings....

New technology from Eldec/EMAG helps control the induction hardening process.