Complete inspection of gear surface finishes at the submicron level became a reality with the introduction of Gleason’s 300GMS nano, in 2022. The new system ushered in an exciting new era in gear inspection. For the first time, producers of EV transmission gears, and gears for other applications requiring very tight tolerances and low noise requirements, could quickly inspect surface finishes and perform extremely reliable noise analysis at submicron levels—benefits that were almost impossible to achieve just a few years ago.

The arrival of Gleason’s Hard Finishing Cell (HFC) in 2018 represented a paradigm shift in the way automotive transmission gears and gears for e-drives, could be produced in high volumes. Now, for the first time, 100 percent inspection of every gear, and every gear tooth was possible in-process, without impacting the high speeds at which these gears need to be hard finished. Identifying, and correcting for, conditions that create unacceptable noise behavior in these gears, on the fly, was finally a reality too.