Whether it’s for manufacturing within the automotive industry or other sectors that operate on an international level, mass production pipelines and even smaller scale workshops remain steadfast in their need to increase productivity and reduce processing times for gear fabrication.

 

Mitsubishi is one such manufacturer continuing to pave the way forward for internationally recognized gear manufacturers, like True Gear & Spline, to get the most from their machinery.

 

Today’s spotlight showcases the Mitsubishi ST40CNC gear shaper and how it employs proprietary technologies to deliver unmatched productivity. But first, to kick things off…

 

What Does a Gear Shaper Do?

When you’re looking for a machine to handle internal and stepped gears, your first port of call should be a gear shaper. Shaping is carried on this machinery as the workpiece and the cutting gear rotate in unison, during which the cutting gear moves forwards and backwards during the machining process.

 

Helical guides move gears, as you might imagine, helically to process helical gears. In most machines, the guide needs to be replaced – an expensive process both in cost and time, requiring a skilled technician to complete.

 

 

The Defining Features of Mitsubishi’s ST40CNC

1) Streamlined Gear Shaping

The ST40CNC does away with the need to replace the aforementioned helical guide, i.e. a whole range of gear cutting processes can be done using a single gear shaper. Instead, what it does is control the helical pathway of the guide with unmatched speed and precision through numerical control (NC) programming, allowing machinists to exploit this ingenious technology to increase gear shaping productivity.

 

Innovative solutions to these widespread issues have earned the ST series to be the first machines to make use of NC programming for torsional motion in the cutting of helical gears. Reasons like this are part and parcel as to why True Gear & Spline continually invests in established and well-renowned machinery, like the ST40CNC, throughout our 22,000 sq. ft facility - it’s not just us that notices the difference, clients do too.

 

2) High Speed Cutting

Channels for increased productivity don’t end there – the ST40CNC packs in a hefty 800 str/min of optional spindle stroke on top of the 500 str/min baseline, nothing to scoff at. Catalysts to productivity are what operators crave – especially for high volume runs - when shaping helical gears, and accessibility to higher rates of spindle strokes goes a long way in satisfying this need.

 

Mitsubishi went about achieving this in a simple, yet ingenious way - by adjusting the drive gear ratio of the spindle and curtailing vibration with the addition of balanced weights. Incorporating these changes more than halved oscillation amplitudes (across the cutting direction) at high spindle stroke speeds for the processing of helical gears.

 

Quality the Whole Way

We’ve touched upon just one of the five CNC gear shapers we house in our facility at True Gear & Spline – all meticulously chosen to help in our goal of delivering gears, including helical gears, and splines throughout Canada. Quality is practiced holistically here, meaning from top to bottom for each and every process. No better is this shown by all of our gears meeting the relevant AGMA industry standards, and our facility being ISO 9001 certified. Whether you need gear grinding, cutting, shaping, or machining, get in touch and help us help you!