When a company has been manufacturing gears for almost a century, it’s a good bet that it knows what it’s doing.
And that longevity and quality are just a few measuring points to what Circle Gear & Machine has offered to a broad spectrum of industries since it first opened its doors in the 1930s.
Since then, the company has changed hands a few times before becoming the family-owned-and-oriented business it is today, but that has only enhanced what Circle Gear has brought to the table through the years.
“We strive for honesty and ethical behavior in all our dealings with customers, employees, and vendors,” said Charlotte Schmidt, president of Circle Gear & Machine. “Driven by a commitment to continuous improvement, we constantly seek ways to refine our processes, tooling, and procedures to deliver the highest quality parts at the best possible price to our customers.”
Gears of all types
To that end, Circle Gear’s expertise covers a wide range of products. According to General Manager Paul Campion, the company’s manufacturing capabilities encompass a wide range of gear types, such as straight and spiral bevels, spur, helical, worm, and herringbone gears. Additionally, it also has the capability of tooth grinding spurs, helicals, worms, and spiral bevel gears. Circle Gear excels at providing reverse engineering, whether that be from worn samples, prints, or sketches.
In addition to that, Schmidt said Circle Gear has invested in a lot of new CNC equipment and inspection equipment.
“The industry has been evolving and requiring higher quality parts than what was expected years ago,” she said. “To ensure the most precise parts, we’ve invested significantly in advanced inspection equipment, including CMMs for blank verification, gear-tooth inspection systems, and air gauging.
Those higher tolerances are important to industries Circle Gear serves, including mining, robotics, machine tools, and agriculture, according to Campion.
Full-service shop
Circle Gear is a full-service manufacturing facility, and it is equipped to do a respectable volume of work for its customers — typically low to medium runs, according to Schmidt.
“We can produce from one or two to hundreds of pieces, if needed,” she said.
“We cater to a variety of customer needs, from single-piece orders for prototypes or replacement parts to large production runs,” Schmidt said. “Additionally, our on-site sister company, QRS, Quality Reducer Service, provides comprehensive gearbox repair and rebuild services.”
Properly dealing with customers with challenges is also an important business strategy at Circle Gear, according to Sales Engineer Tomas Trzyna.
“We evaluate the problem when the customer comes to us,” he said. “Our process begins with a thorough inquiry, ensuring we grasp the customer’s problem completely. We then dedicate ourselves to finding the best solution. If their needs fall beyond our expertise, we will actively seek alternative sources or companies who can assist them.”
Industry collaboration
It’s that collaborative spirit within the industry that has also helped Circle Gear remain a key player in the sector, according to Schmidt.
“We have many friends in the industry that we can reach out to,” she said. “We might have to pick their brains, or they pick ours. We have shared tooling or cutters that are more unique that we can’t get our hands on right now or vice versa. Several of our competitors are our customers and vendors, and we have good relationships — especially here in the Midwest — with people in the industry. We try to help each other out whenever we can.”
Within the past decade, Circle Gear has been adding to its line of products and services in order to stay ahead of an industry that is constantly evolving, according to Schmidt.
“We’ve invested in a lot of new equipment over the last five or six years, and we’ve upgraded to CNCs, including hobbing, shaping, and OD grinding machines,” she said.
“We’ve also added more CNC turning centers that have live tooling, giving us the capability to complete multiple operations in the same machine, which improves efficiency,” Campion said.
In addition, Circle Gear has increased its sales by 60 percent within those same six years of product expansion, according to Schmidt.
“Focusing on efficiency and maintaining a healthy margin helps us continue to invest in the equipment that’s going to keep us competitive and provide the highest quality parts we can for our customers,” she said.
With its continued re-investment into its success, Schmidt was quick to point out the addition of automation to many of the machines is a big part of that success.
“We have added automation to two of our departments; we have a CNC gear-hobbing machine with a robotic arm and added a turning center with a gantry automatic loader,” she said. “That was something many of us never thought we’d see, so it was pretty exciting.”
Increased efficiency
Automation has been a welcome boon in the world of manufacturing for its ability to increase efficiency across the spectrum, according to Trzyna.
“It helps remove some of the manual setup, but mostly it really cuts down cycle time significantly while freeing up operators,” he said. “An operator can concentrate on either multiple machines or a different set-up at the same time.”
And that means consistent results with higher quality with a much shorter cycle time, according to Schmidt.
Campion added that shorter cycle time can be significant.
“The cycle time can go from eight minutes to two minutes for a hobbing operation, and tooth grinding that took 10 minutes now takes 90 seconds,” he said.
Family owned and operated
Although Circle Gear officially has been a part of the gear industry since 1951, the business can trace its roots beyond that to the 1930s, according to Schmidt.
“We believe it started in the 1930s by previous owners, and then my grandfather became involved with Circle Gear in the late ’60s, but my parents have been the sole owners since the ’80s,” she said. “Today, it’s still family owned and operated. We have lots of family here. We have siblings, cousins, spouses, in-laws and father/sons. It’s definitely a family atmosphere, and we try to be flexible and understanding. We will always try to do what’s best for our crew, whether it’s on or off the clock. I am very honored to call these incredible men and women my co-workers and my family.”
It’s easy to see that, over the years, the company has definitely evolved, according to Schmidt.
“We were a small, seven-man garage shop 40 years ago, and now we’re over 50 employees. We’ve grown significantly, especially in the last 10 years,” she said. “In 2014, we expanded into a new building. It’s right next door; we’ve connected the buildings and more than doubled the capacity. We were in a 47,000-square-foot area, and now we’re over 127,000 square feet. We added bevels to our portfolio around 2004, and in the last 10 years, we’ve more than quadrupled our bevel department alone.”
Looking to the future
With the changing political landscape, Schmidt said Circle Gear is preparing for a future that has the potential to increase its output.
“We anticipate more manufacturing being required in the United States in the coming years, which would lead to an increased need for gears,” she said. “All equipment for farming, packaging, robotics, machine tools, and mining — anything that might be manufactured here in the United States instead of overseas — is going to require gears. So, with demand likely to increase, we’ll obviously continue to keep an eye out for improvements on equipment that’s going to help us support the needs that will arise moving forward.”
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