Oil, especially across the heartland of America, continues to be a hot topic. We were recently involved in a project to provide safe control of the flow. A Canadian oil and gas pipeline valve manufacturer presented us with a challenge to produce a right angle gearbox to manually actuate a pipeline valve. They had been originally building these gearboxes themselves. But as larger oil flow control valves were being introduced, they preferred to find a supplier to eliminate using internal resources and to reduce component costs. Before approaching us, they had difficulty finding a [...]

Servo systems aren’t the only solution for precision motion control applications. Other gear products can fit the bill when more traditional drive technology is desired. We recently had a customer inquire into a solution for a motion control problem he had in his production of precision bellows. The design was a continuous process of feeding a substrate that was systematically folded and then cut off into either standard or custom lengths. His problem was that the material length between folds was inconsistent, which affected the proper compression of the bellow. He was presently trying to use [...]

With energy efficiency, a hot topic, designing hybrid power plants for vehicles is growing in popularity and cost-effectiveness. But the gearing necessary requires special consideration. We had a customer recently request a right-angle spiral bevel gear design that was to be incorporated into a hybrid diesel/electrical power package to drive a bus. Much like a train power supply, this hybrid diesel bus engine was to drive a generator that supplied energy to electric motors that powered the vehicle. Designing a gear system to achieve this presented several challenges. The first challenge is that diesel [...]