Chicagoans are very particular about their hot dogs. To begin with, it has to be an all-beef product, served on a steamed poppy seed bun. But just as important are the essential toppings. If you walk into a proper Chicago hot dog stand and order it "Chicago Style," you'll get exactly these seven ingredients on your dog: yellow mustard, chopped white onions, neon green pickle relish, a dill pickle spear, tomato wedges, sport peppers and, of course, celery salt.

Most books related to the gear industry are more about the business side or the technical aspects of what we do.

I'd like to apologize to the dedicated people working on revisions to the AGMA 925 standard and the Technical Report ISO 15144-1, both of which deal with the issue of micropitting. In the March/April issue of Gear Technology, we published an opinion piece in our Voices column that harshly criticized the methods for predicting micropitting outlined in ISO 15144-1.

The 25th anniversary is the silver. The 50th is the gold. The 75th is the diamond. But what symbolizes the 100th?

Teaching a kid to ride a bike is hard work. Sure, you can put training wheels on the bike, and the kid will be mostly safe, build some confidence and manage to get around. But it's not really riding a bike, is it?

For us, 2016 is the year of smart ideas. Not our smart ideas, but yours. We've spent a lot of effort collecting information from Gear Expo, our State of the Gear Industry annual survey and market research to find out more about what you want from us. We've also taken your suggestions and used them to make improvements, add new features and build on what we've been doing here for 32 years in our role as the Gear Industry's Information Source.

One of the great benefits of Gear Expo for us here at Gear Technology is the opportunity to meet faceto-face with many of the people who, in one way or another, contribute to our success throughout the year. After all, our success is dependent almost entirely on information and the people who provide it. These contributors include researchers at top technical universities, the heads of technology at major gear industry corporations, independent consultants with decades of gear industry experience, members and volunteers at leading industry organizations like the AGMA, our technical editors and others.

If only there were some source of endless knowledge, experience and wisdom to guide you through your gear-related problems. If only there were some philosopher on a mountaintop whose sole purpose was to bring enlightenment to your gear noise problems, to unravel the mysteries of profile shift, to provide insight to a critical gear manufacturing problem or to explain the meaning of life (gear life, that is).

Our goal at Gear Technology for the past 31 years has been to bring you the best possible technical information about gear manufacturing. We serve as the industry’s educational resource, explaining the technology not only so that you can understand it, but also so that you can make use of it in your gear-related business.

If you haven’t already done so, you should make plans to attend Gear Expo in September. It’s a unique and important show, and you should take advantage of it.