The wind turbine industry has been plagued with gearbox failures, which cause repair costs, legal expenses, lost energy production and environmental pollution.

Jules Kish responds to comments about his article on finding a hunting ratio, and Dr. Sante Basili argues that shaving is still the best way to finish a rough-cut gear.

In 1877, Irish immigrant William Gleason, owner of a machine tool business in Rochester, NY, suffered a terrible blow. Gleason's son Tom died. The loss was not merely a personal one. Tom had been his father's assistant, and the senior Gleason had no one to fill the gap and help him carry on his business.

Interesting gear factoids discovered wasting time on the Net while pretending to be working...The first four-function mechanical calculator was built by the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz in 1694. While not commercially available for nearly 200 years, the design was the basis of many such calculators until well into this century.

As part of the Addendum Team's never-ending quest to improve the overall cultural tone of the gear industry, we bring you the following: April 23 is the 432nd birthday of William Shakespeare.

Your Addendum team has come across a number of Good Ole Boys in its time; now we bring you something of even more interest - a Good Ole Gear Book. Mr. Robert Price, of Automation - Gears - Machinery, a gear consulting firm in Delanson, NY, shared with us a real find.

What Is Whisker-Reinforced Ceramic? Whisker-reinforced ceramic as applied to cutting tool inserts comprises a matrix of aluminum oxide into which approximately 50% by volume of high-purity silicon carbide "whiskers" are randomly dispersed. The "whiskers" are, in fact, single crystals having dimensions of approximately 0.6 microns in diameter x 10-80 microns in length. These "whiskers" have a tensile strength on the order of 1,000,000 psi (690 MPa). The composite material that is the best known and most widely applied using this technology is designated WG-300 and manufactured by the Greenleaf Corporation of Saegertown, PA.

Good References In the 7th Edition of McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 10 pages are devoted to the subjects of Gears, Gear Cutting and Gear Trains.

In 1985 a new tooling concept for high volume gear production was introduced to the gear manufacturing industry. Since then this tool, the wafer shaper cutter, has proven itself in scores of applications as a cost-effective, consistent producer of superior quality parts. This report examines the first high-production installation at the plant of a major automotive supplies, where a line of twenty shapers is producing timing chain sprockets.