Gear Production
Issue link: http://gear.epubxp.com/i/262216
March 2014—21 F E A T U R E Producing Precision Gears They needed precision gears of a variety of sizes and confgurations, so what did Liebherr do more than 60 years ago? It designed, engineered and built its own gear-making equipment, which became one of its businesses. And yes, it still produces gears for its own requirements. L iebherr Group manufactures construction cranes, mobile cranes, crawler cranes, hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, pipe layers, cargo handling cranes and stackers, aircraft landing gear, and refrigerators—just to name a few. One of the things that the people at the company discovered shortly after it was founded in 1949 was that to produce many of its products, it needed gears. Rather than simply going out and sourcing the components, company founder Hans Liebherr and his colleagues decided in 1952 that they would build the machinery necessary to produce the gears they needed, which gave rise to another product offering: machine tools. Today, Switzerland-based Liebherr is one of the world's larger suppliers of hobbing and shaping machines, gear grinders and gear cutting tools. In addition, it has a range of robotic handling systems, which range in capacity from 0.5 to 1,500 kg. While its mining excavators may be more massively impressive (for instance, engines ranging to 4,000 hp and shovel capacities to 42 m 3 ), the gear-making machinery that Liebherr The LC 180 gear hobbing machine includes chamfer cut capability, but rather than chamfering with the same tool arbor as is used for hobbing, there is a secondary station. This means that overall cycle time is minimized. 0314_MMS_Gear_GaryFeature1.indd 21 2/13/2014 2:45:38 PM