What do you do at Neugart and what’s a typical week like for you?
I’m a technical sales representative with Neugart USA, and, therefore, I’m responsible for our East Coast territory customers. I advise existing and potential new customers from a mostly technical standpoint. That can be as simple as matching an already selected gearbox with the correct motor mount, all the way up to sizing gearboxes for multiple axes on a customer’s machine.
I’d say a typical week for me consists of sizing, matching, and quoting, if you want to bring it down to a few bullet points. But, of course, we do other typical sales tasks as well, like qualifying leads, determining new opportunities, and participating in — right now — mostly online customer meetings, but they’re usually a lot of in-person meetings.
Let’s talk about Neugart’s rack and pinion combination. What makes Neugart’s rack and pinion combination unique to the market?
Neugart’s connection between the gearbox and the pinion is designed for the optimum performance. This saves the customer countless hours of engineering to determine the coupling for their application. And in addition, our pinion gearboxes are designed to guarantee the performance from the input of the gearbox to the rack.
Such a gearbox-pinion combination developed from a single source is the guarantee for the ideal technical coordination for the rack and pinion drive. As for the racks, we were looking for the perfect partner for us that fits our quality and precision standards, and with Schneeberger, up in Massachusetts, we found that perfect partner.
What kind of technical coordination goes into Neugart’s rack and pinion drives?
The numerous solution options we have provide high dynamics and high load-bearing capacities at the same time. That’s made possible by our precision gearing. Our pinions come with helical or straight teeth and can be combined with a total of eight gearbox models, with either splined output shaft or with flange output shaft if maximal torsional stiffness is required. The pinion is pre-mounted on the gearbox, and that means this compact unit can be quickly installed in the application, which means less installation work is required.
In what kind of situations is the rack and pinion combination most needed?
That can be any application that involves high levels of radial force with a high demand for accuracy. That can be a robotics application with the 7th axis being the robot moving on a traversing axis, or making higher tool weights and heavy lifting possible in the machine tool industry.
Another typical application is a gantry, as used in laser or plasma cutting or on wood processing machines. And our pinions with the helical gear teeth have outstanding synchronization quality and, therefore, allow good positioning with a high-finish quality of the machined work pieces.
As industries have evolved, how have Neugart’s rack and pinion systems evolved with them?
When we first started making gearboxes with mounted pinions about 15 years ago, the gearboxes we offered that way were limited to two models. Now, we have numerous options from our economy line and our precision line. We wanted to respect and react to the requests from our customers that we received over the years, so we put a team together to meet and exceed these needs in terms of technology and price.
Another aspect that has evolved with the new product developments is our sizing tool, NCP. It is a huge help for our customers to design and size their application and define the best gearbox solution. And nowadays, with the new rack and pinion system, that data can be calculated in NCP as well.
What ways can you see Neugart’s rack and pinion combinations pushing the market in the next decade or so?
With the high quality of Neugart’s products, along with the operator friendly sizing tool, we’re in a position to help grow the rack and pinion market, and together with our local sales rep organizations and distributors, we have an extensive sales network throughout North America which is set to find these new applications that do not yet utilize the rack and pinion solution, or just simply need an overhaul.
MORE INFO www.neugart.com/en-us
