More Bankruptcies

A gear cutter friend of mine showed me the auction flyer of yet another Chicago gear cutter gone belly up.

By order of The Honorable Carol Doyle, United States Bankruptcy Court, for the Northern District of Illinois, Case Number 03B37936

Astron Gear

Preceeded in death by:
Chicago Gear
Industrial Gear
Gearex Fulton

4 of the largest gear manufacturers in the Chicago area are now history.

When I asked why, my friend said-

"Free Trade"


Steve

"Free Trade", what, it came along and smacked them in the head? Maybe it was poor management, obsolete equipment, wrong product mixs or a million other reasons. If they can not keep up with the times its time to reallocate their resources for more productive uses. Or, maybe to satisfy the protectionists, the Feds should buy their gears and store them in a cave some place. That would sure be a good use of tax payer's money, not. Free trade/free market is what makes the world go around, try to get along without it.

NAMPeters-

My friend has forgotten more about gear production and that industry than you will ever know.

In a flippant instant you proclaim they deserve it.

Get a life.

The contract gear cutting business must be a really tough one these days.

I think it is due to a delayed action.

The USA lost it's printing machinery industry long ago and it wasn't because of competition from foreign machinery, they just gave up.

Lotsa gear work gone.

Machinery designers are getting away from custon mechanisms requiring gears and cams.

Modern servomechanisms and actuators along with their assocated controllers constitute the field called motion control.

Complete systems are available from OEM suppliers. Almost any kind of machine can now be made up using motion control devices so that except for small gear head motors, they are gear and cam free.

A recent survey by Control Engineering Magazine shows that a majority of servo mechanisms are installed in production line machines. That field of application now has eclipsed the machine tool industry in the use of servo motors and controllers.

Variable frequency AC drives not only have replaced gear transmissions, but the VFD's now can be synchronized with each other and with other servos so that there is no need for drive shafting or gearboxes at the point of application of power.

The motion control people call this an electronic drive shaft or an electronic gearbox.

More gear work gone.

Then there is what I call the old shop syndrome.

A gear shop is going great guns, the machines are running and the work is getting out.

Everyone is too busy to notice that the machinery is wearing out and the supply of new cutters is getting low.

Then work slows up or changes and the shop finds that it is stuck with machinery that might not cut gears to tighter tolerances or that the cost of getting new cutters and rebuilding or replacing machinery is too high given the situation the shop is in.

That's what finally does the shop in.
Each of the shops that went out has it's own story, but overall the contract gear cutting field has the above stories in common in some way or another.

Ooooooh, Motion Guru - You Big Bad Meanie!



[This message has been edited by JimK (edited 04-28-2004).]

Good reply JimK. One other point is people like, John Stevenson of England and a member of this board, who has developed an electronic gear hobber which will allow small shops and HSMers to cut precision gears on demand. Soon Boston Gear will start to feel the effects. The invisible hand at work.

Not flippant machinehead61, just the realities of life. Change is going to come whether you like it or not.

Free trade....

There is no Free Trade, or Free Lunch.... Someone totes the bale or pulls the barge.

I wish Astron had of been able to make a switch. Having to compete Head On with an Asian "maker" years ago, I learned a lot about what Free Trade is not. My dad worked at explaing how things operated when I was small. Took me years to start to really comprehend.

Companies like Astron are targeted - by everyone it seems. Nothing free in that.

Jerry

NAMpeters:

Gould and Eberahrdt was working on elelctronic drive for gear hobbers and so was Gleason about 15 years ago.

The idea is to use synchornized servos instead of the lavish gear train associated with mechanical hobbers.

I have been away from that study for a while so I don't know the current state of the art.

See? even gear making machinery is using fewer gears!

Here's another one, just for fun.

"One of the flagrant offenses of the Clinton administration's treasonous rampage known as "Chinagate" involved the sale of McDonnell-Douglas Plant 85 in Columbus, Ohio, to Communist China. In addition to the 1,000 American workers who lost their jobs at the plant, the U.S. suffered a major blow to national security and military capability. In late 1994, Chinese workers dismantled the entire plant's production machinery and hauled it away in an enormous convoy of over 275 semi trucks. The hi-tech booty was trucked to Long Beach, California, loaded on China's COSCO ships, and taken to China.

Later, this incident bacame a major cause celebre for Republican critics of the Clinton administration's many Chinagate scandals that involved transferring critical military technology to Beijing - in exchange for massive, illegal campaign contributions. Clinton critics pointed out that China had been keenly interested in obtaining the plant because of its very sophisticated computer-controlled, five-axis profiling machines, which would allow China to greatly enhance their ability to produce ultra-modern warplanes and missiles. Pentagon security analysts had attempted to block the sale due to these considerations. But the Clinton White House and Commerce Department overrode these objections, claiming the machinery was being sold to China for non-military purposes. Soon it was discovered (surprise, surprise!) that some of the McDonnell-Douglas machines had been diverted to a People's Liberation Army (PLA) company - Nanchang Aircraft Co. - to manufacture Silkworm cruise missiles.

Similar Chinagate scandals erupted, revealing transfers of restricted military-use technologies to China by Clinton corporate cronies, such as Loral, Hughs Electronics Corp., and Boeing Satellite Systems. Another heated battle arose over Clinton's efforts to lease important piers at the Port of Long Beach (California), including the former Long Beach Naval Station, to the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), a branch of the PLA and a critical component of Red China's global military plans."

Chinagate All Over Again
New American,March 10, 2003

More to come.

There is a huge triving gear industry in the world right now with motion control based systems. Bayside, Exlar, Cone Drive and a host of asian and european companies make high precision helical planetary gearsets and worm drive gears for hundreds of different gearbox designs on a custom order basis with a turn-around time of less than a few weeks from PO to delivery.
You can buy double enveloping worm drive gearboxes from Cone Drive Textron for peanuts.

The market is now dominated by efficient US and foreign companies that can provide a dozen varients of every gearbox they carry at a low cost while maintaining a profit.

I think that the companies that have gone bankrupt are the ones that failed to see where the market was headed . . . and the companies that recognized where it was headed are sitting pretty right now with clean, efficient factories - talented workers and a growing market share.

As for drive systems in general - low speed high torque motors are thriving as well and many of the applications that used gearboxes in the past no longer need them. We build a machine right now that has X, Y and Z axes of high force precision positioning that uses NO GEAR BOXES and NO SCREWS of any type. Just magnetic fields.

Technology marches on - gears are going the way of tubes . . . get used to it - stop whining about it. Using this as a political hammer to beat people over the head with accomplishes nothing and misses the real issue that is before us.

[This message has been edited by motion guru (edited 04-28-2004).]

Yep, I worked for Xerox for 23 years. In the early days the big copiers were filled with drive gears, sprockets and drive chains transferring motion to all parts of the machine from a single large main drive motor. When I left the norm was for nearly every rotating component to have its own small drive motor, usually direct drive with no gears, either a servo motor or stepper, computer controlled. Also, what gears there were were either powder metallurgy or molded plastic. I don't recall seeing a single machine cut gear in the later machines. BTW, I'm not talking about little desk top machines but about machines that weigh 1000lbs.

Motion:

Cone drive got themselves into their schweetie-cookie position during WW II when they developed that enveloping worm drive for gun mounts for the Navy. At one time the Cone Drive was secret.

The requirements for that type of high redction precision drive just keep getting more numerous as mechanical technologies progress.

The motion control industries are highly integrated, the same OEM makes the motors the controllers and the gear heads. They are big enough and have their products standardized enough so that they can fit almost any application.

No single outfit is capitalized to that extent.

Not that you can't make it as a gear shop, only you have to choose your gear making niche and not over extend yourself.

There will always be a need for gears it is just that the market is shuffling around now. Being "established" can work to a disadvantage these days.

Not every machine is going to go to motion control and not all gears will be molded or formed. There is probably a good market in repairing high capital cost gear reduction units right now.

It all gets back to how each outift runs their shop. There still are plenty of gears to be cut.

So since you are here....

I am looking for small planetary gear boxes or something similiar. It is for a small autonomous vehicle - about 750 grams - Controls links the arms and legs.

I am not doing well in finding small gear systems. Any suggestions where to start looking? It is a prototype - I have to pay for it and it needs 6 to 8 per chassis.

Any suggestions? It can have low RPMs.... Already stripped a few gearboxes based on my ideas... Strip first - then ask!

Jerry

micromo . . .
Maxon motors . . .
There are also a few NEMA23 and NEMA11 gearboxes on the market - I hardly ever use anything smaller than a 90mm gearbox so I am not that familliar with the little guys.

I can picture 3 different catalogs - but cant remember brand names . . . must be getting old!

http://www.robotstorehk.com/gearbox.html

http://www.pololu.com/products/tamiya/

http://www.robotcombat.com/marketplace_mechanical.html

Here's another free trade transfer of technology.

Bush's Chinagate Replay
Consider the recent sale to Communist of a key General Motors Corp. defense plant in Valparaiso, Indiana. "An important U.S. high-tech manufacturer is shutting down its American operations, laying off hundreds of workers and moving sophisticated equipment now being used to make critical parts for smart bombs to the People's Republic of China (PRC), wrote Scott L. Wheeler of Insight magazine, in a January 31st article that broke the story.
The plant in question is a factory owned by GM subsidiary Magnequench Inc., which uses rare-earth elements to produce powerful hi-tech magnets with important military applications. Insight reports that the company plans to shut down the factory "this year and relocate at least some of its high-tech machine tools to Tianjin, China. Word of the shutdown comes as the company is producing critical parts for the U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) project, more widely known as smart bombs."
Insight interviewed Dr. Peter Leitner, a senior stategic-trade adviser to the Department of Defense, concerning the implications of this pending transfer. As a key figure at the Pentagon's Defense Technology Security Administration, Dr. Leitner played an important role in exposing the Clinton Chinagate scandals. In the Insight interview, he noted that rare-earth magnets "lie at the heart of many of our most advanced weapons systems, particularly rockets, missiles and precision-guided weapons such as smart bombs and cruise missiles." He also pointed out that "China has an ongoing high-priority effort to produce a long-range cruise missile. They are trying to replicate the capabilities the U.S. has such as with the Tomahawk cruise missile, as part of their power projection, and expanding their ability to strike targets at long distances."
Unless the public applies significant pressure on President Bush and Congress to nix this deal, China will end up gaining yet another "great leap forward" - courtesy of American know-how. Why is this happening? It is happening because President Bush is pushing forward the same pro-Beijing policies of his predecessors, Republican and Democrat, going back to the Nixon-Kissinger era. Despite constant White House rhetoric about stopping the transfers and proliferation of weapons technology, things may be as bad as (or worse than) ever under Team Bush.

Chinagate All Over Again
The New American, March 10, 2003

sounds like much ado about nothing.

Magnequench rare earth magnets are nothing special - while leading edge a decade ago . . .

Originally invented by ??? Anderson who started a company called Custom Servo Motor and did indeed supply products to the military (and a huge variety of industrial applications)

CSM was sold to MTS and became MTS automation which subsequently sold to Parker Hannifin a year or so ago.

Anderson I believe now works for Bayside Motion Group . . .

Bottom line - the technology involved is well known, widely licensed and widely used by a variety of manufacturers in the US and abroad. The GM subsidiary involved in manufacturing the magnets was a "high cost" producer that could not compete profitably with other manufacturers of the same technology.

Perhaps another spin on the story might just be that a few enterprising US businessmen sold China a bill of goods?

I agree with Motion Guru.

The Chinese essentially bought a set of used tools and machinery.

I'll bet there is a irony there because there is a good chance that some if not most of the machinery is Asian made.

If China wants hi tech, they don't have to bug us, they are right next door to where all of it not made in China is made.

Remember the flap about China buying Sony Playstations because the chip in them could be used in a missile guidance system?

I am sure the chip can be so used, but how is anyone going to stop the spread of that kind of technology?

Look at our current military campaigns. Are we getting hit with hi tech weapons?

Nope.

We are hoowever taking casualties from improvised and jury rigged stuff.

The USA is too hi tech to mess with at our own game. Our enemies are taking the opposite tack and hitting us with garbage.

Casualties are casualties, We are waking up to the fact that The Next War is going to be fought really dirty.

China is so far, not our enemy. I wouldn't be for giving away the store to them but I don't worry much about them either.

OK, just a few more examples of "old" technology going to China.

"On November 7, 2001, several weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Gary Milhollin, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law school, testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services. According to Professor Milhollin:

American export controls are now weaker than ever before in our history. Today's export controls are but a shadow of what they were in the 1980's, when Saddam Hussein was building his mass destruction war machine and we were still in the cold war. Since 1988, applications to the Commerce Department have dropped by roughly 90%. Cases have fallen from nearly 100,000 in 1989 to roughly 10,000 in fiscal year 2000. The reason is simple: fewer items are controlled so fewer applications are required. When applications do come in, they are almost always approved. In fiscal year 2000, only 398 applications were denied - about four percent of the total received. Perhaps we could put up with this system in a time of peace, but we know that there are terrorist organizations willing to do us harm, and that weapons of mass destruction in their hands would threaten our way of life.

"There is little doubt," says Dr. Milhollin, "that the present system allows American exports to endanger our security." He cited as a recent example American transfers to Huawei Technologies, the Chinese company caught helping Iraq improve its air defenses by outfitting them with fiber optic equipment.
"The history of Huawei shows how American exports to China can wind up threatening our own armed forces," Milhollin testified. "At the time when this company's help - to Iraq was revealed," he pointed out,"Motorola had an export license application pending for permission to teach Huawei how to build high-speed switching and routing equipment - ideal for an air defense network. The equipment allows communications to be shuttled quickly across multiple transmission lines,increasing efficiency and reducing the risk from air attack."

Dr. Milhollin noted that other American firms have also transferred technology to Huawei through joint operations. For instance:

-Lucent Technologies has set up a new joint research laboratory with Huawei "as a window for technical exchange" in microelectronics.

-AT&T signed a series of contracts to "optimize" Huawei's products so that, according to a Huawei vice president, Huawei can "become a serious global player."

-IBM agreed to sell Huawei switches, chips, and processing technology. Milhollin quoted a Huawei spokesman as saying that "collaborating with IBM will enable Huawei to...quickly deliver high-end telecommunications to our customers across the world." Customers like Saddam Hussein.

Chinagate All Over Again
The New American, March 10, 2003

Oh, and have a few quotes from our bosom buddies, the Chinese.

"Despite Jiang Zemin and company's toothy smiles, the PRC's Communist government continues to refer to the U.S. in its public and military indoctrination as "Number One Enemy." In 1995, a top PLA strategist threatened using nuclear weapons to vaporize Los Angeles if the U.S. interfered in a Red Chinese attack on Taiwan. In 1999, the PLA published - Unrestricted Warfare - considered one of the PRC's seminal books on military doctrine, by Senior Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. The book makes very clear that the U.S. and the West are Beijings enemies. Last year that opus' two authors wrote an article explaining the long-term, patient strategy behind Red China's dealings with the West. "Forbearance is the mark of great virtue," the colonels noted. "Such is the goal of Chinese statecraft."

Chinagate All Over Again
The New American, March 10, 2003

[This message has been edited by machinehead61 (edited 04-29-2004).]

Seems like you mixing metaphors here... the world is different, too...

in 1985, I could *barely* export products for a $500 Amiga PC. It had almost 0.8 MIPS - but a 16 bit bus. DOD said supercomputer... like the VAX machines DEC built.

Today, the fastest computers in the world are based on linux clusters (free...) and can be cobbled together with 400 MHz PCs..... The newest Intel & AMD chips are at 3.6 GHz or so.... almost 3x faster than the CRAYs of times past.

I can put together a 3GHz supercomputer for $500 or less.

China is a critical growing market for Intel/AMD. We (Intel/AMD) are counting on solid growth there to fuel sales.

The plastic from almost ALL ICs comes from one place - Sumitomo - in Japan. All, for any pratical purpose.

Chips are bonded out - to a very high percentage - in Malaysia. Not here.

Chips that don't use plastics, generally use ceramics - Kyocera - from Japan.

The medical industry is growing rapidly along Moore's curve.

So the idea the DOD will "stop" technology from leaving is extremely limited at best. In some instances, the only thing happening is elimination of US companies from selling a common worldwide commoditiy.

It's people that go bad and kill people. Not systems. Hopefully you see that.

The problem in a lot of what goes on is that regulators or enforcement people know how to deal with paperwork -but are clueless when faced with real - versus paperwork - danger. Since a lot of people are getting killed now & even more soon, I think paper shufflers and security personnel ought to start thinking and getting a handle on this.

I have seen this mess coming for years. Like any good military guy will tell you - logistics, finance, and support infrastructure are what matters. These are not the things vetted by export paperwork.

you see?

--jr