If you enjoy working with your hands—without doubt a large segment of Gear Technology’s audience—you must go to robives.com. There you will find one of the most clean-but-serious fun websites on the Internet. It is where you will learn—or re-learn, in some cases—how to create things from paper. Origami, you’re thinking? Nah—mere child’s play.

Another year, another AGMA Fall Technical Conference. But this is no ho-hum event. Not when every year, the conference attracts some of the greatest mechanical engineering minds on the planet, along with representatives of the world’s greatest manufacturing entities. And who knows—perhaps one day there will be an extraterrestrial contingent—the science is that good. And all of it readily applicable to real-world manufacturing.

AGMA925–A03 scuffing risk predictions for a series of spur and helical gear sets of transmissions used in commercial vehicles ranging from SAE Class 3 through Class 8.

Before we get into projections and prognostications about the future, let’s take a minute to review 2012. For many in the gear industry, the year was better than expected. Some manufacturers had a very successful year leading up to an even more successful manufacturing trade show (IMTS 2012). Others were searching for more business, hoping that the general state of the economy wouldn’t make things worse. In some cases, it did.

Gear Technology’s annual state-of-the-gear-industry survey polls gear manufacturers about the latest trends and opinions relating to the overall health of the gear industry. As in years past, the survey was conducted anonymously, with invitations sent by e-mail to gear manufacturing companies around the world.

It wasn’t so very long ago that a high school-educated, able-bodied person with a will to work typically had little trouble finding a decent job in manufacturing. Whether at an area job shop, an OEM plant or auto plant—work was to be had. Work that paid well enough to marry, buy a home, feed, raise and educate a family—with even enough left over for a modest retirement pension.

The past several months have been filled with uncertainty. Everyone wanted to wait and see who would be our next president and how the political landscape might change. Now the elections are over, and the polls are all closed, so we should all be getting back to business, right? Publisher Michael Goldstein shares insight from our state-of-the-gear-industry survey.