January/February 1997

Internet Adventures, Part II powertransmission.com

In July of 1996 we introduced the gear community to the Internet in these pages through the Gear Industry Home Page (GIHP). This electronic buyers guide for gear machine tools, tooling, accessories and services has proven to be more popular than we could have envisioned. In our first month, we had over 3,000 hits, and in our third month, we have over 4,500. By our fourth month, we topped the 7,000 mark, and we are on our way to 11,000 hits in November. As our advertisers develop their own home sites in order to offer layers of information about their companies, their products and services, we expect this activity will increase even more.

Improved Ion Bond Recoating for the Gear Manufacturing Industry

This article summarizes the development of an improved titanium nitride (TiN) recoating process, which has, when compared to conventional recoat methods, demonstrated tool life increases of up to three times in performance testing of hobs and shaper cutters. This new coating process, called Super TiN, surpasses the performance of standard TiN recoating for machining gear components. Super TiN incorporates stripping, surface preparation, smooth coating techniques and polishing before and after recoating. The combination of these improvements to the recoating process is the key to its performance.

Composite Electroless Nickel Coatings for the Gear Industry

Electroless Nickel (EN) plating, a process dating back to the 1940s, is one of the predominant metal finishing methods today. It is especially suitable for the gear industry, whose end uses span innumerable other industries, providing an endless assortment of requirements, environments, materials and specifications. EN plating has a broad array of functional features, which include:

Hard Coatings on Contaminated Surfaces - A Case Study

Physical Vapor Deposited (PVD) coatings such as TiN (Titanium nitride) have been a boon for cutting tool manufacturers. They reduce wear and, therefore, extend tool life, which in turn reduces production costs. But PVD coatings are expensive, and when they fail, they cost both time and money, and they causes of the failure are not always readily apparent.

Gear Software You Didn't Know About

Designing and manufacturing gears requires the skills of a mathematician, the knowledge of an engineer and the experience of a precision machinist. For good measure, you might even include the are of a magician, because the formulas and calculations involved in gear manufacturing are so obscure and the processes so little known that only members of an elite cadre of professionals can perform them.

Coated Gears Provide Slick Solution for Human-Powered Boat

Design Problem: Develop a gear drive for a pedal-powered water craft that will be easy to manufacture, use and maintain; that will be lightweight enough for the boat to be portable; and that will eliminate the environmental risk of lubricants leaking into the water.

Calculating Gears

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.

New Software and Hardware

New Software/Hardware updates for the months of January/February 1997.

Technical Calendar

Complete Technical Calendar for January/February 1997.