Common Gear Failures
The strength, toughness, and cost effectiveness of steel make it the most widely used material in gear-making . Different steel compositions offer an array...
Industry Standards For Steel Cleanness
The correlation of steel cleanness to the performance of parts made from steel has been recognized by engineers for many years. This has been...
Designing Quiet Gears
In today’s industrial and commercial environment, gear noise is increasingly undesirable. Conversely, quiet gears are necessary and important in nearly every industry and for...
Metallurgical Reasons for Grinding Cracks and Their Detection
Grinding is often a final machining step to achieve desired surface finish or final dimensions. Grinding is a high-energy process where a lot of...
Q&A with Bill Miller
What’s your role at Kapp?
I’ve worked in numerous roles for Kapp Niles beginning in 1981, including service manager, application engineer, product manager, regional sales...
Steel Cleanness and Why Measurement Matters
In the past, cyclically loaded gearbox components often experienced fatigue failure caused by large oxide inclusions. Gradual improvements to the steelmaking process led to...
Designing High Contact-Ratio Gears
High contact-ratio (HCR) gears are gears defined with a contact ratio greater than 2.0. Standard gears have a typical contact ratio of 1.2 to...
Development of Residual Stresses During Machining and Workholding
There has been much discussion on the development of residual stresses and distortion during heat treatment. There is an entire conference series called “Quenching...
Q&A with Casandra Blassingame
Tell us about your role at AGMA.
My role as AGMA’s director of education is to be responsive to the needs of our member companies...
Additive Manufacturing: Challenges, Possibilities, and the Gear Industry
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a technology that has the potential to fundamentally alter manufacturing, specifically metal manufacturing. The ability to design complex shapes, which...
Achieving Gearbox Design Excellence
In this month’s column, general concepts related to design excellence are discussed. The first one is simplicity in designs. Always seek the simplest and...
Applications of Hardenability
In the previous Hot Seat column, the concept of hardenability was discussed. It was determined that the sole contributor to hardness was carbon content,...
Q&A with Bridget Dubbert
Tell us about Engineered Lubricants (EL).
Engineered Lubricants is celebrating 50 years this year. Based in Maryland Heights, Missouri, it was founded in 1967 by...
Nitriding’s “White Layer” and Isotropic Superfinishing
Developed in the early 20th century, nitriding has evolved into a standard process across many industrial applications. Often considered the simplest technique for case...
Micropitting
Micropitting is a topic that has generated a lot of interest, discussion, research, and many technical papers in the last few years, but it...
Q&A with Allen Williston
Please tell us a little about your background.
I graduated from University of Missouri-Rolla, now called Missouri University of Science and Technology, with a Bachelor...
Factors That Affect Hardenability
Steel is a mixture of iron, carbon from 0.0 to 1.2 percent, and alloying elements. Carbon provides the hardness, and the alloying elements provide...
Evolution of Heat Treating Furnaces for Gears
It’s the mid ’70s, the phone rings, and I’m told that Ford wants to upgrade their heat treat equipment at the Rouge facility. Driving...
Gear Corrosion in the Manufacturing Process
No matter how well gears are designed and manufactured, gear corrosion can occur during the manufacturing process, which may, in turn, result in catastrophic...
Achieving Gear Design Success
After a gear design is completed, enough of the gear, stress, and life data is established so that the gear set can be completely...
