A one-day seminar and Open House on the manufacturing of gears will be held at NCMT’s Coventry technical centre and showroom on 9 July.

Various production methods will be demonstrated on Japanese-built Makino and Okuma machining
centres, as well as on one of Okuma’s multi-tasking turn-mill machines.

The methods covered will include hobbing, power skiving and ‘InvoMilling’, which can produce different gears using the same standard machine platform.

Gear grinding will also feature; this will involve the use of NCMT’s proprietary EasyGear grinding software. Other techniques on show will include both wire-cut and ‘ram type’ production solutions on Makino EDM machines.

The main message during the event will be the flexibility, high productivity and relatively low investment cost achieved by producing external and internal gear types on five-axis machining centres, multi-tasking lathes and EDM machines, coupled with the short lead times and high levels of accuracy and repeatability that can be achieved.

Also being demonstrated will be gear inspection; this will be done in-cycle via a touch probe on an Okuma Multus multi-tasking lathe, as well as off-line on a Hexagon Metrology Leitz CMM equipped with Quindos software.

The guest speakers at the event will include David Curtis (Senior Technical Fellow at the Advanced Manufacturing
Research Centre) and Rob Frazer (head of the Gear Design Unit at Newcastle University).

Anyone wishing to attend the event, which will be held at NCMT's Technical Centre (Siskin Drive, Middlemarch, Coventry CV3 4FJ) should register with Clare Hutchins (Tel: 020 8398 4277) or e-mail .