hobbing, shaping, gear grinding and thread grinding.” He also noted features of the Siemens CNC that have yielded positive impacts on the production at Forest City Gear, including “so- phisticated executive soſtware for all machine movements and the fast program reading that allow us to cut and grind much faster, with more options such as reverse direction, segment cutting and combined operations, when compared to other controls we see.” Typically, the CNC is used for all axis, rotary and spindle
movements and the machine operators particularly appreciate the multiple standard cycles for cutting with degressive feeds, increasing speeds plus special cycles for gear tooth removal and reversing directions to improve finish or reduce cutter wear. Forest City Gear cuts a wide variety of standard and exotic
materials in the production of its gears and splines. Tese in- clude titanium, Inconel, 4340, 300M, Vascomax 250 and 300, Nitralloy 135M, 9310, 4150, 4140, 8620, aluminum bronze, 13-8, 15-5, 17-4, 316 and 440 stainless, Hastelloy, Ferrium and
numerous thermoplastics. Te shop can carbide rehob to RC 60–62 and gear grind at all hardnesses. Kevin Chatfield, a longtime Forest City Gear employee
with 20 years of CNC machine experience who works with the Samputensili grinders said, “I’ve used all the brands of con- trols we have here … and for many jobs, no other control can do what the Siemens 840D can do. One example would be the internal, external and form-grinding I do on the Samputensili machine. If the other controls could perform these operations at all, which is doubtful, it would be a very slow process.”
The Reaction on the Shop Floor Mark Cunningham, a 12-year veteran of CNC, runs the
Gleason machines and noted the controls are very user- friendly: “Te screens are easy to program and modify, and then you get a clear picture of what’s happening at every step in the cycle.”
Brian Turnbull runs various machine tools at Forest City Gear, including a Hoefler gear grinder.
in the shop, so their run-time cost is the highest.” He added, “Most of our jobs, though not all, here are short runs on very expensive materials. If the machine takes too long to complete the first part or has repeat rejects, we lose money—it’s that simple. I’m proud to say that neither our operators nor our production supervisors allow that to happen. And the controls on the machines are a big reason why we stay so successful in achieving that accuracy and consistently good part production at Forest City Gear.”
Insisting on the Best Adds Up—and Pays Off Te company has remained among the leaders in the
market for high-precision gears, owing to this strategy of buying the best machines, hiring the best gearmakers available and verifying the output of this 100-person shop by using the
The company boasts nearly every leading brand of gear-making machine tool on the world market.
Brian Turnbull, a newcomer to Forest City Gear, but a
longtime machinist, had worked with a brand that competes with Siemens CNC and was initially hesitant about making the change: “Ten, as soon as I saw the easy layout, plus how quickly it could be set up and go into action, with no trouble navigating at all, I was convinced Siemens was simply a better control.” Young noted one last point about the CNCs on these
machines. “Tese machine tools produce our most complex parts, including helical splines and internal gears most other shops simply cannot or will not make. Te cycle and program read times on the Siemens controls are critical to our pro- duction work, plus these are the most expensive machines
power of the industry’s leading quality lab, which occupies a cleanroom-level environment in the middle of the factory. As Young explained, “We do checking of our gears and splines at various test stations located throughout the shop, but the final proof resides in our quality lab. Our equipment is so sophis- ticated, even our competitors oſten bring us their work to have it checked. It’s one of the things that’s led to our current customer base of about 400 companies, about 20% of whom are other gear companies or gear producers themselves.”
Edited by Yearbook Editor James D. Sawyer from information supplied by Siemens Industry Inc.
Motorized Vehicle Manufacturing 49
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212