Richard Spens has a hobby that leads him onto the Internet, through magazines, to auctions and into farmers' back yards.

The need for improved power transmissions that use gears and gearboxes with smaller overall dimensions and with lower noise generation has left manufacturing engineers searching for different methods of gear processing. This search has led to the requirement of hardened gears.

Some of the pressure on American manufacturers seems to be letting up. This is welcome relief, considering the squeeze they have been under for the past few years.

Nobody's sure what went on in Bolsa Chica, CA, when gear-shaped stones were used there 8,700 years ago, but a popular belief is that at least some activity revolved around manufacturing.

Carbon steels have primarily been used to manufacture aerospace gears due to the steels' mechanical characteristics. An alloyed low carbon steel is easily case-hardened to obtain a hard wear surface while maintaining the ductile core characteristics. The microstructure achieved will accept the heavy loading, shocks, and elevated temperatures that gears typically experience in applications. The carbon steel machinability allows for general machining practices to be employed when producing aerospace gears versus the more advanced metal removal processes required by stainless and nickel-based alloys.

Information for IMTS 2002.

Gear manufacturers typically use plastic, steel or other metals to make their gears, but Andrew Shotts made his first gears out of sugar and chocolate.

Complete Product News for March/April 2002.

Top Secret Code Name: Ginger Mission: Design, prototype and test a transmission for a new device. The transmission must be compact and efficient. It should have almost no backlash, and it must be able to operate in both forward and reverse. Most importantly, the transmission must be quiet. In fact, it shouldn't sound like a transmission at all. It should blend in with the environment and sound like music or the wind. This mission, should you choose to accept it, is top secret. Not even your employees can know what you're working on...

Welcome to Revolutions, the column that brings you the latest, most up-to-date and easy-to-read information about the people and technology of the gear industry.