ShopSolutions Case Histories of Manufacturing Problem Solving
Gearmaker Wins with Advanced Grinding
M
ilwaukee Gear (Milwaukee, WI) was founded in a small downtown Milwaukee one-story brick build- ing by two men in 1918, Emil Borisch and Walter
Kohls, who were the company’s salesmen, machinists, order clerks and inspectors. By 1953, the family-owned company had moved to its current sprawling 180,000 ft2
(16,722-m2 )
facility. It was acquired by a private equity group in 2008 and subsequently sold in early 2012 to Regal Beloit Corp. Today Milwaukee Gear employs about 220 and operates as a unit of Regal Beloit America Inc. “We manufacture gears and pinions for a variety of in- dustries—air and gas compression, oil, gas and coal mining, construction equipment, cranes and hoists, different types of air-moving equipment, fans and blowers, refrigeration chillers and speed reduction/increase gear cases,” said Joe Leone, manager quality control/gear grind. “Customers come to us with their designs. Our engineering group uses the latest gear ratings software to optimize their applications, and then we manufacture the gearing to spec for them. In some cases, we will manufacture housings and do complete gearbox assem- bly. However, most of the time our customers do their assem- bly in their own facilities and we supply the loose gearing.”
At Milwaukee Gear, Joe Leone (left), manager, Quality Control Gear Grind, and Venu “Vinny” Gupta, operator and setup specialist, stand in front of the Studer S40 universal grinder with a large pinion gear in the foreground.
machining, turning of surfaces, drilling and threading, and machine keyways or splines if required. We have full in- house heat-treating capability and metallurgical control. The case-hardening process involves gas carburizing and polymer or oil quench in an atmosphere-controlled integral furnace.
“We produce gearing for the high-speed compressor industry, which is one quality level down from aerospace gearing.”
Milwaukee Gear basically works from the raw material stage to a finished component, including machining, heat treat and all the processes in between. “We work in steel, typically a carburizing grade of 9310, 4320, 8620 or 17Cr Ni Mo6 bearing quality. I’d say 90% of our gearing is carburized and hardened,” said Leone. “We’ll use bar stock, die forgings, hand-hammered forgings in many different steel configura- tions. We purchase the raw material, do all the pre-heat treat
And then we do all of the post-heat treat machining, which includes OD/ID grinding, and, of course, gear tooth grinding, which is our core competency.”
Milwaukee Gear prides itself on always having the very best equipment and being second to none in investment in advanced technology. In 2005, the company acquired a Studer S40 uni- versal grinder from United Grinding Technologies (Miamisburg, OH). “Not only is it still running today, seven years after first
October 2013 |
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