Happy Thanksgiving! Our company will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, as we give thanks for all of the blessings in our lives. Among those blessings are our customers, and we thank you for doing business with us! We will be closed Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th in honor of the holiday. We will be back in the office and ready for business on Monday the 27th. Happy Thanksgiving! We hope to work with you again soon. Your friends at DieQua Corporation.
The tried and true method of synchronizing the speed of multiple stations by linking them mechanically through a gearbox system remains a popular option in machine design. This is still seen in printing presses, conveyors, roll forming and packaging lines, just to name a few examples. A customer of ours recently requested some assistance in designing a conveyor and feed system for a large pipe cutting operation. The long, heavy pipe was to be loaded on a set of rollers that would then move the pipe into a cutting house where it would be sawed [...]
Gearbox seal leaks are the bane of gearbox users. Since lubrication is the lifeblood of enclosed drives, maintaining oil levels is critical to long life. When oil starts leaking, corrective action is necessary, but what action? What’s going wrong? Actually, the answers can be varied as the gear type used, how it’s mounted, the speed it’s running, and the environment it’s in. We had a user of a competitive worm gear speed reducer give us a call. He had his gearbox mounted with the output shaft horizontal and his quill-mounted motor pointing vertically, below [...]
Screw jacks are just one member of the linear motion family, more suitable for relatively low-duty cycles. A customer had a problem we had to troubleshoot that highlighted what not to do. There are two common types of screw jacks. The first type of screw jack is the ball screw jack. They have recirculating balls in the threads that reduce friction, allowing for higher-duty cycles than the other type. The second type is the machine, or acme thread, screw jack that has a sliding action similar to a nut and bolt. This limits [...]
The need for communication and data transfer are growing at a staggering rate. More satellites and more dishes are being put into service on a daily basis to satisfy and utilize the technological advances. While we have written about satellite dish applications before, there has been a recent explosion of inquiries from various companies producing these products in different sizes. The inquiries include large land-based satellite dish positioning drive designs and mobile applications used by the media, government agencies, and the military. In the most recent applications, the requests have been for system [...]
The Association of High Technology Distribution held the 2017 Fall convention, in Asheville, NC, held from October 3rd to October 6th, 2017. The AHTD was established to increase the productivity, profitability and market share of their Automation Solution Providers and the manufacturers that supply them products and services. DieQua’s President Meikel Quaas and Motion Products Manager Tom Kahn were in attendance as manufacturer members. The AHTD is an important and influential organization as its distributor members are some of the most competent and professional motion products and system suppliers across the entire continent. [...]
Most people think of cables, wires or electronic boxes when they think of communications equipment, but there is also the mechanical element involved when it comes to transmitting data between the ground and the sky. One of our customers sought us out with a number of mechanical requirements for a large, radar dish that was being designed. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about this radar engineering design, but it offered an opportunity to provide several of the wide variety of drive components we offer and work with the customer to help [...]
From September 29th to 30th, DieQua Corporation held the 10th annual sales meeting, at their national headquarters in Bloomingdale IL. Approximately 20 sales representatives from the four corners of the United Sates attended to engage in product education, professional development and team building. The event kicked off Thursday evening with a welcome reception at Eaglewood Resort. As the representatives arrived at the resort they were greeted by DieQua’s sales support staff and treated to a light dinner buffet. This atmosphere provided an opportunity for the field personnel to reconnect with the corporate group as [...]
Understand the different types of gears and their functions in a gearbox with this handy “Roll Call for Gears” infographic. It covers parallel, intersecting, non-intersecting, and non-parallel axis gears.
Shaft-phasing gearboxes can be used for more than just registration and timing applications. In this example, the customer discovered a unique application for shaft-phasing gearboxes, using their dual input gear drive design to achieve reciprocating motion, beyond traditional registration and timing applications. Shaft-phasing gearboxes go by a variety of names - including speed correction drives and timing differentials. The differential moniker came from the original bevel gear designs, with side spider gears, that could be rotated with or against the direction of the main drive gears. This had the effect of speeding up or [...]
The name John Madden may be familiar if you follow professional football. He was the long-time commentator on Monday Night Football (now Sunday nights) who traveled everywhere by bus. The rumor was he was afraid of flying. No, this is not an article about John Madden. But it is an article about a bus. Mr. Madden is not the only one that rides in modified tour buses. Band crews, racing crews, and a variety of other groups that travel a circuit use modified buses to provide comfort and cost-effective movement from city to city. [...]
The benefits of zero backlash, high torsional rigidity, high tilting capacity, and compact size enable most industrial robots to perform precise pick-and-place tasks. But it isn’t just robots that need these benefits. Devices as large as machine tools and as small as optical systems need the features that both flex spline and cycloidal gear designs offer in one way or another. While there are a couple of significant players supplying these types of drives, Spinea’s unique cycloidal gear design provides distinct advantages over the competition. For one, the torque density is unmatched providing more [...]
Gearbox Maintenance Tips and Mistakes to Avoid DieQua offers tips for installing, operating, and maintaining gearboxes. Below, we discuss common gearbox maintenance mistakes and how to avoid them. Specifically, our tips include both the error and the preventative measures in each of these scenarios so you can best learn how to maintain a gearbox. Tip 7 - Correctly Mount Servo Gearhead It is incorrect to mount a gearhead horizontally, as it allows for the increasing of some loads associated. This horizontal orientation causes lateral misalignment which shortens [...]
Screw jacks are just one member of the linear motion family, more suitable for relatively low duty cycles. A customer had a noise and wear problem we had to troubleshoot. It highlighted what not to do. There are two common types of screw jacks. Ball screw jacks have recirculating balls in the threads that reduce friction, and machine, or acme thread, screwjacks have a sliding action similar to a nut and bolt. Ball screws allow more duty cycles, and machine screws allow less. Within these screw jack types, there are two versions. What we [...]