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What Are The Major Gear Types and How Are They Manufactured? 

Gears are used in a great many products and come in many different forms. Gears are the main component in many aspects of things in your life, and work to make all the parts run as a whole. An important gear type is called the industrial gear. 

A spur gear has a cylinder shape as its form.  Spur gears can be found in a variety of industrial equipment and products. The teeth of the spur gears come together parallel to the rotation axis in the gear. The best places to use a spur gear are with equipment that does not push them at high speeds, and where noise is not a difficulty. 

The second form of gear to discuss is a helical gear. The shape of these helical gears is created to make a thrust load. Different from the spur gears, which rotate parallel to the axis of rotation, helical gears rotate at an angle to the rotation axis. Many industries use helical gear in their equipment, including rubber, medical, steel and packaging to name a few.

A gear that is widely used in many automobiles and motor vehicles, as well as in the paper, textile, sugar and steel industries most commonly, is known as the worm gear. There are two major types of worm gears, single worm gears, and multi-start threaded worm gears. Worm gears function by driving together two shafts, and are also known as wheel gears in some industries. 

A bevel gear is another common gear used in manufacturing. This gear is used quite often in the printing, cooling tower, and machine tool industries in their manufacturing equipment. To function properly, the bevel gear sits at a right angle of another angle in its rotational axis. 

The most common materials that are used to create any of these custom made gears are steel, copper brass, and other metal alloys. When manufacturing industrial gears, there are several different processes used to create them. 

When a tool called a broach is used to cut the gear, it is called broaching. A common use for broaching is when the gear is circular in shape. 

To machine a gear, a process called hobbing is used, and is used mostly for spur and helical style gear cutting.

Grinding uses an abrasive wheel tool in order to cut the piece. 

Gears can be manufactured in many different ways depending on the need. No matter what size, style or type, we can count on gears to be used to deliver us our needs on a daily basis, and keep the unseen processes of our products consistently working.

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