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.

Gears are extremely complex shapes. Coordinate measuring machines, or CMMs, are designed to measure complex shapes. It seems to follow that CMMs world, therefore, be the ideal tool for measuring gears. But the answer is not so simple.

You go, and if your name is Ryan Boxx, you go faster than everyone else. Boxx became the fastest 15-year-old in America this summer when he won his division of the National Hot Rod Association's Junior Drag Racing League National Championship.

We've contacted many of the gear industry's leading suppliers to find out what they'll be showing at Gear Expo 99. Booth numbers are current as of July 31, 1999, but they are subject to change. A current list of exhibitors and booth information is available at the AGMA Web site at www.agma.org.

Thousands of gear industry professionals will converge October 24-27 in Nashville, TN, for Gear Expo 99, the industry's biennial collection of the latest in gear manufacturing technology. With nearly 50,000 square feet of exhibit space sold more than two months in advance of the show, this year's Gear Expo will offer visitors more opportunity for supplier comparison than ever before. As of July 20, 166 suppliers of equipment, tooling, services and precision gear products were scheduled to participate, with as many as 20 additional booths yet to be sold, according to AGMA vice president and Gear Expo show manager Kurt Medert. The largest previous Gear Expo was held in 1997 in Detroit, with 43,100 square feet of exhibit space and 161 exhibitors.

Industry News for September/October 1999.

For the first time in probably 15 years, I've attended an auto show. Although I haven't been purposely avoiding them, over the past decade or so, the auto industry hasn't given me a compelling reason to go.

No one is quite sure when gears were invented. It's universally agreed, however, that they've been transmitting motion in one form or another for quite a long time.

Gear designers today are continually challenged to provide more power in less space and improve gear performance. The following article looks at some of the most common ways to increase the power density or improve the performance of gear trains. The author also takes an in-depth look at the case of a steel worm mating with a plastic helical gear and explores ways to optimize this increasingly common configuration.

Welcome to our Product News page. Here we feature new products of interest to the gear and gear products markets.