West Yorkshire-based Halifax Rack & Screw (HRS), established in 1953, has grown to become one of Europe’s largest specialist manufacturers and suppliers of high-quality gear racks, pinions, leadscrews and nuts.

More recently, the company has also been producing round gears as well at its Brighouse factory.

To take advantage of the latest technique for machining them accurately and quickly, the firm invested in a gear skiving machine — a bar-fed Multus U3000-2SW from Okuma.

This multi-tasking lathe was supplied last year by sole UK agent

NCMT (www.ncmt.co.uk), which is about to retrofit automation equipment of its own manufacture to speed up the handling of components and free up operator time.

HRS sales engineer Simon Matthews said: “For medium- to large-batch production of gears, skiving has become the technology of choice.

“For example, in the case of the first three gears we are producing for Vermeer in the USA, the 25min cycle times for the two larger gears would be three- to four-times longer by hobbing or using other gear-cutting machines.

“Okuma was the first multi-function machine manufacturer to develop a generic platform for skiving high-precision gears to DIN5 quality. I estimate that the Japanese company is 18 months ahead in this technology.

“The gear skiving process on Okuma’s turn-mill platform has proved a great success and has allowed us to penetrate a new sector of the market — namely, the economical production of round gears.

“At its technical centre near Coventry, NCMT has also demonstrated to us skiving on a five-axis machining centre, which is perfect for larger-diameter gears and smaller production quantities.

“Should we receive meaningful enquiries for this type of product, we would have no hesitation in investing in this technology as well.”