Sintered Gear Applications
Sintering is an additive process of manufacturing where powder metal mixed with alloys and binding agents are turned into a solid shape with the help of extreme pressure. Sintering process was introduced in the 1940 but since then many industries have employed its use. Automobile and power tools are few examples of sintered gear applications. While many a shape can be created from the sintering process, we are focusing on the simple yet extremely important gears.
Gears are simple to look at, they are small, they have teeth cutout on the outside or inside of a circular disk. While simple and small in form factor, gears are vitally important in any mechanically or electrically operated devices. Even before metals were used to manufacture gears, big wooden structures with teeth cut into them were used in heavy lifting tasks. With time came improvement and metallurgy brought us metal alloy gears that can now be found from a wrist watch to a motor engine. Sintered gear applications can be seen in most industries, but here are a few that frequent it the most.
There are other industries such as marine where gears and their use is seen but these five have exponentially high usage rate.
Advantages of Sintered Gear
As it is evident, if a motor is involved, a gear is not far behind in helping transfer of that power through different designs, shapes and sizes of equipment. While there are cases where other types of gears are used, but in most cases, sintered gears are preferred and there are several reasons for that.
- Tight Tolerance: Sintering process involves pressing of powder alloys together with binding agents and then putting it through a furnace to fuse the particles together. This results in tight grouping of molecules and high tolerance can be achieved. In a large assembly it is important all parts correspond to a strict tolerance requirement and that can be achieved with precision. Sintered gears are, at most times, small in size and it needs to correspond with multiple interfaces within a machine so having tight tolerance can always benefit an assembly line.
- Manufacturing Repeatability: Sintered gear production is a closely repeatable process. Since the production involves set temperature for all, a fixed mold and uniform material, production is identical between different parts of production. There is little to no difference in the manufacturing process, a guarantee other manufacturing process cannot give, or cannot give at the same price point of production.
- Cost: When it comes to production, sintering is the cheapest and most assured way to get what you want. The parts are uniform, they have high tolerance, the same result can be had over and over again, all of that is to say there is little to no down time in the manufacturing process. Cost plays a vital role in production planning and sintered gears are the best when it comes to all things, especially cost.
- Environmentally Sound: As manufacturing has taken off all over the world, there is the concern for the environment and need to meet energy as well as climate standards. Sintered gear production is energy as well as climate additive because there is little to no waste from the sintering process. As mentioned above, sintering is an additive process, there is a machining waste like in die casting and machining processes. So, environmental concerns are turned down a little when it comes to sintered gears.
At Eurobalt Engineering OÜ, we are manufacturing sintered gears for all kinds of applications. Doesn’t matter if the shape you need is helical, bevel, pinion, combinations, or spiral bevel. We offer the best powder metallurgy solution for our customers depending upon their needs. So, come utilize our years of experience in the sintered gear manufacturing process and see how it can be applied to your production needs. Call us or send us an email and one of our technical sales specialists would gladly help you make the best decision for you project.