Tel : 023 8022 0897
Fax : 023 8063 8930
E-mail : Sales@williams-eng.co.uk
Managing Director Mr David Fripp
d.fripp@Williams-eng.co.uk
Many types of Gears can be cut. We specialise in gear Splining, Hobbing, Shaping, Worm Cutting, Helical gears. We offer in some cases, subject to application, 24 Hour turn-round. Gear cutting services for aircraft, aerospace & military applications. Cutting services for gears include anti-backlash, bevel gears, cluster gears, coarse pitch gears, custom & special, cut, face, fine pitch gears, ground, helical gears, hobbed, internal & metric gears
It is specialist work, for example, setup of bevel gear cutters has always been time consuming and involves setting up to six axes, including rotary axes, linear axes and axes that move in an arc. Even with experienced operator/setters, set up times can often be up to two days.
All company owned equipment is calibrated externally, traceable to UKAS Standards, to meet AS 9100 gear cutting requirements.
Founded in 1960, Williams & Co has been manufacturing precision machined
components including gears, supplying the Aerospace, Nuclear, Medical,
Formula 1 & Commercial markets..
Types of gear cutting undertaken include spur and helical gears, worms
and worm wheels, Involute splines, chain sprockets, timing belt pulleys,
internal gears, and straight sided serrations. We also specialise in CNC
milling, CNC turning, grinding, lapping and honing, whilst maintaining a
vigorous quality control department conforming to BS EN ISO 9002 &
AS9100 aerospace requirements.
Williams understand the quality control requirements necessary in highly
technical industries. Manufacturing to blueprint under our strict
quality control parameters in our Southampton plant we strive to give
each customer satisfaction on-time delivery and zero defects
5 Axis CNC Machining Centre Turn/Mill enables us to manufacture items with Turned Diameters, Flats, cross-holes etc in one operation. With Sub-spindle this offers Turn Mill facility in one operation.
6 CNC Lathes are on site ranging in capacity turning components from as little as .062" dia. up to 10" dia. Hyundai Kia SKT21 Fanuc 21i Control
Max. swing diameter - 550mm
Max. turning diameter - 350mm
Max. turning length - 410mm
Latest Dugard Machining centres X Axis 660mm, Y Axis 520mm, Z Axis 510mm. Twin arm 24 station ATC carousel type. Standard spindle speed 8000rpm. Control Heidenhain TNC410 / iT.
Flat surfaces can be achieved using our Lapping machines, where as for the cylindrical lapping of Bores etc, we can lap Sealing Faces down to 0.5 Micoinch (0.013 Micron) This is extremely important for the Sealing of Faces to Metal to Metal contact in the Hydraulics Aerospace Industry.
Because we specialise in Match Grinding, our Customers require fine surface Bores with very fine surface finishes. In Honing together with Solid Lapping we can achieve Surface Finishes down to 0.5 Micoinch (0.013 Micron) This is extremely important for the Valves Match Ground in the Aerospace Hydraulics Industry.
CNC gear cutting
The last 10 years or more has seen a significant amount of business go offshore as customers chase lower prices for gearsets in countries with lower wages. Then 9/11, which depressed air travel in the United States, resulted in severe cutbacks in aircraft building. The 737 was reduced from 28 planes per month to 14. A drive for efficiency and cost-cutting was the result.
The contact pattern, or the areas of the tooth surfaces that come into contact as the gear teeth engage and disengage during their rotation, is critical to the performance and operating life of the gear set. If the contact pattern is too small, the gear may not be able to withstand the forces transmitted when the gear set is operating under load. If the pattern is not contained completely within the perimeter of the gear tooth... or if it runs off the tip or into the heel of the tooth... the result can be premature failure. To complicate matters, the gears, bearings and other components of the gearbox move as they react to the transmitted loads, temperatures, and other operating conditions, resulting in changes in the gear tooth contact pattern that must be identified and provided for. An ideal tooth contact pattern under load should encompass the bulk of the tooth surface yet avoid any contact with the edges.
Typically, an acceptable contact pattern is arrived at by an iterative process that is used by most gear producers. First, based on previous experience, an engineer will make an educated guess at the gear tooth geometry required to provide a correct contact pattern. Next, the part is fabricated and the gear teeth are machined part of the way to the end result.
When the gear and its mating pinion are finished, their teeth are coated with a marking compound, and they are run together in a tester. The area of contact can be seen in the disruption of the marking compound. An experienced inspector is required to interpret the visual results.
More often than not, the contact pattern resulting from the initial attempt is unacceptable. Consequently, the settings on the gear tooth grinder are adjusted and a new pinion is ground. The parts are checked again. This trial and error process can continue through many cycles until the best educated guess for contact pattern is achieved.
The next step is to analyze how loading affects the contact pattern. First the gears are mounted in the gearbox and run under light load to determine the contact pattern movement. Then the gears are visually inspected to check the contact pattern, which is indicated by a light wear pattern on the mating tooth surfaces. If the pattern is not correct, which is often the case, the gear tooth grinder has to be set up again and another pinion ground using slightly different settings. This cycle continues until a suitable contact pattern is developed when run under full load.
The machining summary is automatically downloaded to this CNC bevel gear cutter, reducing setup time for the machine to about 1 hour compared to 4 to 6 hours for a conventional bevel gear cutter.
The longer the trial-and-error process drags on, the longer it takes an engine builder (for example) to deliver the product to the customer and get paid.
Computer Aided Gear Engineering (CAGE) software enables the user to establish the optimum contact pattern for a gear set in about one week, avoiding all of the problems with the trial-and-error method.