Forest City Gear Products on New-Generation Mars Rover

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Forest City Gear (FCG) announces that it has successfully completed its supply of approximately 60 space-qualified gear components, housings and carriers to Aeroflex, a major contractor on the newest Mars Rover vehicle for the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). The Mars Science Laboratory mission is scheduled for launch in late 2011 and will determine whether Mars was or still might be an environment capable of sustaining microbial life and thus be inhabitable. On this vehicle, Forest City Gear products execute mechanical motions on the actuators onboard, including drive gears, gearboxes, planetary gears, and wheel assemblies. Various spur, helical and spline gear types were furnished on this project.

Due to its unique arsenal of gearmaking machines and inspection equipment, FCG was chosen to finish, hob and shape various gear designs for Aeroflex and also to form gear grind, using dozens of CBN wheels made specifically for this project. Gears for the Rover project typically had diameters ranging from under 1/4” up to 4-1/2” and featured fine surface finishes on gears to 96 pitch. Per part, the production required ranged from several pieces to a “large” run of 100 pieces. For a number of the components, Aeroflex outsourced the blanking to its vendors, some of the top machine shops and metal fabricators in the country, with FCG then cutting the gears and/or grinding into the blanks. The company also made many of the gears complete, per prints supplied by Aeroflex.

“Our relationship with this project began with a modest order from another vendor for some small gears on the first generation Rover wheel drives,” according to Fred Young, CEO. “The shaping of the high crown design was a problem for the customer’s previous suppliers, who couldn’t get a cutter with enough back-off to successfully cut the crown shape. The crown hobbing had a shorter relief and a different cycle was needed at the back edge.”
Forest City Gear has also provided assorted components for the previous generations of Mars Rover vehicles. To learn more contact Everett Hawkins, director of sales, at (815) 623-2168 or ehawkins@forestcitygear.com. The company’s Web site is [www.forestcitygear.com].