Okay. You've been convinced. You've gritted your teeth and decided to spend the money to launch a company Web site. Everybody from your teenage propeller-head to the girl in the mail room and the salesman in the flashy suit who gave you "such a deal" on Web site services has promised that your site will be the best thing that's happened to your business since the advent of CNC machines.

Standards are unlike gears themselves: mundane, but complex, ubiquitous and absolutely vital. Standards are a lingua franca, providing a common language with reference points for evaluating product reliability and performance for manufacturers and users. The standards development process provides a scientific forum for discussion of product design, materials and applications, which can lead to product improvement. Standards can also be a powerful marketing tool for either penetrating new markets or protecting established ones.

Earlier this year, a relative of mine, Sidney Mandell, tragically passed away. I had the good fortune to serve with Sidney on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the Machinery Dealers National Association (MDNA). Though he started before me, his MDNA career and mine overlapped for about 2 years. As I think back on the many things I learned form him, one of his favorite phrases keeps come to mind: "We walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before us."

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.

Complete Technical Calendar for September/October 1995.

Aircraft transmissions for helicopters, turboprops and geared turbofan aircraft require high reliability and provide several thousand hours of operation between overhauls. In addition, They should be lightweight and have very high efficiency to minimize operating costs for the aircraft.

Question: When we purchase our first CNC gear hobbing machine, what questions should we ask about the software? What do we need to know to correctly specify the system requirements?

Acquisitions, Contracts, and ISO 9000 Certification

For environmental and economic reasons, the use of coolant in machining processes is increasingly being questioned. Rising coolant prices and disposal costs, as well as strains on workers and the environment, have fueled the debate. The use of coolant has given rise to a highly technical system for handling coolant in the machine (cooling, filtering) and protecting the environment (filter, oil-mist collector). In this area the latest cutting materials - used with or without coolant - have great potential for making the metal-removal process more economical. The natural progression to completely dry machining has decisive advantages for hobbing.

Durability is the most important criterion used to define the quality of a gear. The freezing of metals has been acknowledged for almost thirty years as an effective method for increasing durability, or "wear life," and decreasing residual stress in tool steels. The recent field of deep cryogenics (below -300 degrees F) has brought us high temperature superconductors, the superconducting super collider, cryo-biology, and magnotehydrodynamic drive systems. It has also brought many additional durability benefits to metals.