The American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) hosted 17 paper presentations on advanced application of gearing at the annual Fall Technical Meeting (FTM) at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee in Wisconsin. The papers were presented in four topic areas of expertise: Manufacturing & Heat Treatment; Load Capacity Analysis; Gear Design Considerations; and Gear Applications.
AGMA selected these presentations from a record number of abstracts submitted. “I was impressed by the quality of the presentations,” says AGMA Board Chairman Dave Ballard, corporate manager of SEW-Eurodrive, Inc. “Our industry has been known to change with the times, and we are seeing some true innovations in design solutions.”
Presentations crossed a wide variety of gear applications including wind turbine gearbox components, high contact ratio gear, tooth engagement and load sharing, reverse engineering, and self-locking gears. “The economy had an effect on our industry, but our registration numbers show us that companies are still very interested in advancing gear science,” according to Joe Franklin, AGMA president. “I was pleased to see almost half the attendees were first-time attendees, and the audience was well attended by the new generation of gear engineers.”
Attendance was the highest it has been in many years. As with last year, attendees were able to attend a single session or all four. Many of the attendees commented on the “superior quality” of this year’s presentations. Others who have attended in the past stated that it was nice to see many of the junior engineers in attendance. More than 60 percent were attending for the first time. AGMA also went “green” for the meeting, providing electronic versions of the paper presentations prior to their arrival and through handheld flash drives. A complete list of papers is available at [www.agma.org/publications/2010-ftm-presentations].
Planning is already underway for the 2011 Fall Technical Meeting, to be held October 30-November 1 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Next year’s FTM will present a unique opportunity as it will be held in conjunction with both the AGMA Gear Expo and ASM’s Heat Treating Society Conference and Exposition. Attendees from all over the world are anticipated. To get things rolling, AGMA is soliciting technical papers.
Each year the FTM provides an outstanding opportunity to share ideas with others on the design, analysis, manufacture, and application of gears, gear drives, and related products, as well as associated processes and procedures. Authors have the opportunity to present the results of their work to an audience of knowledgeable professionals from the United States and abroad, and to participate in discussions with that audience. Papers should be original to the AGMA audience (not a previously published paper), technically accurate, relevant to the gear art, and free of commercialism. You can participate by preparing a brief abstract—one page or less—of your paper and submitting it to AGMA headquarters by January 18, 2011. Authors should be prepared to meet the following schedule:
January 18, 2011
Abstract due at AGMA headquarters.
February 7, 2011
Authors of selected abstracts notified and requested to prepare first draft.
April 25, 2011
First draft of selected papers due at AGMA headquarters for peer review.
July 7, 2011
Review comments returned to authors for preparation of final draft.
August 31, 2011
Final paper (with illustrations and figures) due at AGMA headquarters.
A membership survey indicated that papers on the following topics would be of considerable interest: unique applications, dynamics, effects of flank modifications on load distribution, micropitting, manufacturing techniques, inspection and gear quality, metallurgy and its effect on gear rating, effect of surface finish on durability rating, noise/vibration, heat treatment and controlling distortion, wear and rating, lubrication, epicyclics (planetaries), powder metallurgy and plastics gearing, failure analysis, FEM modeling, and flexible couplings. Contact AGMA Headquarters at ftm@agma.org for more information. Visit online at [www.agma.org].
