[starbox] Since 1980 the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) has hosted a Fall Technical Meeting (FTM), where the industry gathers to listen to papers presented by leading engineers and researchers. Since its start in 1984, Gear Technology magazine has been publishing some of those papers — and giving them an even wider audience. This year’s FTM was held in Arlington, Virginia, close to the association’s headquarters and our country’s beautiful capitol city. Once again the AGMA technical staff organized a great slate of papers, and the meeting room was full of familiar faces — plus many new ones. The FTM has become a “must attend” event for many people in the industry. It was my privilege to present a paper on high contact ratio gearing, recounting my conversion from skeptic to advocate over the course of 30 years. Hopefully the paper will find its way into GT in 2015; if not, you’ll be able to find it on my website in a few weeks. The 2015 FTM call for papers has already gone out. Starting this year, the entire process will be electronic; details are at the AGMA website. Papers need not be groundbreaking research; my paper hinges upon a tooth form first published in 1935! For those of you who are interested in writing a paper, but wonder if your idea is “good enough,” I will be happy to correspond with you and offer editing and technical support. Of particular interest to me are papers on selecting the best material for a part; on fixing parts with grind steps or grind temper; and on techniques to improve tooth flank surface finish. If you have a water jet cutting machine or a modern CNC gear grinder, you are well positioned to help “solve” these problems. We can no longer count on large corporate members to carry the bulk of the research load. But even small companies like mine can make an important contribution to the gear arts. Why not get your outfit known on the international radar as a place for cutting-edge gears?