The history of gear technology can be traced back to 3000-5000 AD, almost synchronized with human history. Gear transmission is a common technology with obvious product characteristics, and its development and maturity are all related to the development of industrial products. The formation of modern industry in the 19th century began the modern history of gear technology, and the development of machine industry made it become an industrial technology. The rise of the automobile industry at the beginning of the 20th century promoted the development of mass and efficient production technology, followed by the development of navigation, aviation and aerospace technology. as well as the emergence of large modern complete sets of industrial equipment, high-speed gears with high parameters and excellent performance and heavy-duty industrial gears have been rapidly developed and applied, and the corresponding basic theory, technology and equipment have been promoted.
Due to the difficulty of bevel gear technology, there are only three companies in the world: American Gleason, Swiss Oerlikon and German KlingeInberg, which represent the three systems of bevel gears and are not disclosed to each other. Gleason, founded in 1865, has a history of more than one hundred years. It has been the world’s leading supplier of bevel gear machine tools. KlingeInberg in Germany not only supplies complete sets of bevel gear processing equipment, but also specializes in gear measuring instruments, such as single-sided meshing and rolling testers for gears and worm gears. In the 1990s, the world entered an upsurge of mergers and acquisitions, and the American Gleason Company stood out. In October 1995, Gleason acquired Hasse, an old German manufacturer of gear hobbing and shaper machines, and its sales reached 400 million US dollars that year, surpassing the Sigma Group, which is composed of KlingeInberg,Liebherr and Lorenz. In the same year, Hurth was also acquired, giving Gleason the ability to produce precision antimony gear machines and honing machines.
In July 1997, Gleason bought Germany’s Hermann.Pfauter Group for US $100 million, making it once again the throne of cylindrical gear hobbing and grinding machines, and acquired 75% of the property rights of Pfauter-Maag cutting tools. At this point, the company, which calls itself “Gear World”, has occupied “more than half the sky” of the cylindrical gear market. At present, Gleason has 40% of the market share and 45% of the market share. Gleason has more than 15000 bevel gear machine tools in the world.
In recent years, the application of hypoid gears is on the rise. With the development of science and technology, these two kinds of tooth profile systems have developed into a complete set of technical system, there are a complete set of computer programs in software, supporting machine tools controlled by CNC in hardware, and the measurement results can be fed back to the gear-cutting machine tool through three-coordinate measuring instrument, forming a CNC system for data transmission with disk as the transmission medium. In order to meet the requirements of high speed, high efficiency, automation and flexibility, and to develop high-tech CNC gear machining technology, gear machine tool manufacturers in developed countries in Europe and the United States have joined forces to form a more powerful group. make gear design and processing enter a new stage. Typical representatives are Gleason of the United States, Oerlikon of Switzerland and KlingeInberg of Germany.
