Get into Gear: A Practical Guide to Gearbox Selection

By Harry Bate.

Industrial gearboxes are not all the same. Without the right one, performance, flexibility and reliability will
inevitably suffer. But a bewildering choice of gearboxes faces the industrial specifier.

To meet the expanding demands of industrial applications, gearbox manufacturers are producing an increasingly
wide range of gearbox designs. To further match market needs, these different designs produce an extraordinarily
broad range of outputs, ranging from a gentle 2-3 Nm to a leviathan 500,000 Nm and more.

Their functions can vary enormously: from the smoothly silent lifting of the curtain on an operatic performance in
Paris, to the continuous powerful driving of conveyors carrying millions of tons of products ranging from delicate
foods and wine, to bulk grain, coal and steel in Australia.

The machine that mixes your childs ice cream; which powers the lifts that take us to work; and which drive the
baggage escalators which (sometimes) produce our travel luggage: all require very rugged, very reliable industrial
gearboxes.

But whether almost imperceptibly turning an observatory high in the Andes Mountains, driving agitators in waste
water plants, or outloading mountains of cargo with slewing spouts in Esperance, industrial gearbox performance
must be tailored to an endless diversity of specifier demands.

It isnt just as simple as using a gearbox to multiply an engines torque to produce the output required. Specifier
needs may encompass continuous operation, stop-start operation, compact installation, continuously consistent
load and sharply changing load. Operating environments may vary from extremely dirty to hygienically clean, from
aggressive marine, to food grade pure.

So perhaps it is not surprising that the choices, at first glance, can puzzle even professional engineers, and
bewilder the plant operator who wants to select the best for his or her installation.

Naturally, anyone contemplating ideal gearbox selection will consult their gearbox specifying and engineering
specialist. But even relative laymen can profit from an understanding of the basic gearbox types available. The
range of such gearboxes is expanding considerably, and what was appropriate a few years ago, may not be the
optimum now.

Classifications

Gearboxes, or speed reducers, are often classified by the relative position of input and output shafts. This is the
concept behind such terms as in -line, parallel shaft or right-angle gear units.

Within the right-angle drive group are worm gear units and bevel helical units. While traditionally identified by the
type of gearing rather than by shaft arrangement, both are right-angle drives.

Different again are gearboxes of planetary construction, which achieve exceptionally compact construction by
departing from the traditional arrangement of a pinion driving one large gear on a parallel shaft. Instead, the
planetary gearbox surrounds the pinion (called a sun gear) with three or smaller planetary gears mounted in a
planet carrier.

For each specific application, a design engineer may identify two or more product families that meet calculated
torque and speed requirements. As a result, a design engineer will need to evaluate different factors in order to
establish which among compatible configurations best suits the specific application and which proves best value
for money.

Besides a variety of technical considerations, a significant issue can be space availability. The growing demand for
more and more compact machines is placing increasing emphasis on space efficiency of motion control systems.
This places increased emphasis on the importance of proper specification, installation, ventilation/cooling and
maintenance.

Where no limiting factors over-rule technical ideals, design engineers are free to make the most of the features
and advantages offered by each product line. A brief outline of such features follows.
Worm gear units

The worm design allows for very high transmission ratios (of up to i = 100 per single stage). This translates into
greater cost-effectiveness. Also, worm reducers typically ensure quiet, vibration-free operation. They are
inherently a right-angle drive.

Their typically low efficiency (from, say, 90 per cent down to even 35 per cent, depending on ratio, but typically
65-80 percent) suggests their use for low or middle-to-low power demand applications and/or those featuring
intermittent duty. They can be ideal for applications that need to resist reversing, such as an inclined conveyor or
hoist, but only for ratios of about 70-80 or higher.

In-line helical gear units

This style derives from the traditional form of pinion and gear drive and is characterized by high torque density
(i.e., transmitted torque per unit of volume) and high efficiency: 97-98 per cent per machine stage.

These efficient drives offer a natural extension of the electric motor. The load can be driven directly by the
parallel output shaft or through an ancillary transmission (belt, chain, or gear type). Advantages generally include
wide-span bearing support for the output shaft, which ensures good overhung load capacity and longer-term
operational reliability.

Typically available in a wide range of speeds, these reducers generally offer reduction ratios in the range of 3 to
500, with the higher ratios being achieved by use of multiple stages in the gearbox. Ratios outside this range are
possible, but less common in ordinary applications.

Major manufacturers offer various options for ease of mounting and/or enhanced space efficiency, including foot
or flange mounting configurations, as well as combinations with compact or integrated motors.

Right-angle helical gear units

In this configuration, input and output shafts are arranged at right angles via a gear set with either intersecting
(bevel helical) or non-intersecting (hypoid) axes. The right-angle helical design ensures great space efficiency in
terms of width, and provides the primary alternative to worm reducers in applications involving right angle drives.

They once again are characterized by high efficiency and can extend to extremely high reduction ratios (even to
1700:1). The bevel set or hypoid set provide a significant ratio reduction in them. The hypoid arrangement used in
some designs has an added advantage of being quieter and smoother running. Typically, these drives are a
preferred choice where a right-angle drive requires high efficiency. This may be specified for applications
involving continuous duty or large kW demand.

Right angle helical gear reducers come in a wide range of versions. Of particular interest in recent times is the
shaft mounting type with hollow output shaft, with or without shrink disc or with tapering lock. In this
configuration, the gearmotor is fitted directly onto the shaft of the driven machine, resulting in enhanced space
efficiency, ease of mounting and avoidance of alignment issues.

Shaft-mounted gear units

These can be parallel shaft, helical or right-angle helical, planetary or worm gear units. They are frequently used
in conveyor belts. Advantages of the shaft-mount style that make it the ideal selection for many applications are
features such as:

1. Simple, neat configuration

2. Ease of installation
3. Avoidance of the complexities of shaft alignment and of costly machining of mating surfaces
4. Space saving
5. Reduced angular backlash where shrink disc versions are used (because the keyway and its consequent
basklash contribution are omitted)
6. Torque arms that can be combined with torque-limiting devices, such as load cells

In the configuration featuring a solid input shaft, typically driven by a primary belt-and-pulley transmission, final
speed can be adjusted (within limits) simply by changing either of the pulleys so as to modify the transmission
ratio.
Parallel shaft gear units

In all manufacturers ranges, these reducers represent generally the heavy-duty option, to cater for installed
power ranging from a few kW to hundreds of kW and more.

Comprising helical gear sets, they offer high efficiency. These reducers can feature sturdy bearings, frequently the
straight or taper roller type. Such bearings are suitable to withstand the high radial and thrust loading and impact
loading typically encountered in many heavy industrial uses. Applications include:

1. Wood, stone and ore crushers

2. Extruders for plastic materials
3. Bucket elevators, conveyor belts
4. Dies and winding machines
5. Fans and compressors
6. Mixers, stirrers
7. Many mining applications

Parallel shaft units can have a high number of reduction stages and can range in weight from less than 10kg to
many tons. They generally have a male output shaft. The very large units are fixed in place and form a significant
part of the whole machine.

Small-to-medium parallel shaft units with hollow output shaft are particularly favored for shaft-mounted screw
conveyor drives. Their geometry fits well with the geometry of the screw conveyor, providing a neat and compact
drive arrangement.

Parallel shaft units are also frequently used in the shaft-mounted arrangement on belt conveyors. Once again, they
provide a neat, compact and efficient arrangement.

Planetary gearboxes

The compact nature of planetary gearboxes is making them increasingly popular in the industry. Their arrangement
of several smaller planetary gears around the input pinion (instead of one larger gear running to one side) offers
distinct advantages for certain applications:

1. High efficiency. The spur gears used in planetary gearboxes are inherently of high efficiency (97-98
percent per stage)
2. Space saving. The planetary arrangement facilitates multiple reduction stages in a very compact space.
These can be achieved because each reduction stage adds only a small increase in dimension. Compared
with a parallel shaft arrangement, a planetary gearbox can often achieve the same ratio with one fewer
reduction stage, with cost and dimension savings.
3. High torque capacity. Because the torque being transmitted at any time is shared between multiple sets
of teeth on the primary drive pinion, torque capability is greatly increased.
4. Increased reliability - and higher radial loads permissible on the gearboxs output shaft. Reliability and
radial load capacity benefit because the shaft itself is not carrying any radial loads induced by the gears
themselves (unlike parallel shaft systems). Benefits of reduced radial loads include extended bearing life,
a critical component of machinery reliability. Reduced radial loads within the gearbox also permit it to
tolerate higher radial loads from the equipment it is driving.
5. Suitability for shaft mounting. Benefits of shaft mounting, as discussed previously, include elimination of
the cost and complexity of couplings and elimination of the time and labor involved in ensuring correct
alignment of the gearbox and the plant it is driving. Direct drive through shaft mounting also avoids radial
loads imposed by chain drives.

Planetary gearboxes are available in a wide range of sizes and can be modular in construction. Heavy-duty
industrial uses include water treatment agitators, crane slew drives, winches, conveyors, and equipment for the
mining, quarrying and steel industries.

Planetary drives are particularly well suited to applications involving high torque and high reduction ratios. On the
other hand, their compact size gives rise to reduced surface area. This can result in limitations due to the need for
heat dissipation for applications involving high kW continuous operation. Such applications may, for example,
require auxiliary cooling arrangements.

They are an excellent option for slew or winch drives, where intermittent high torque is required, or for large
agitators, where low kW, and high torque is required.
And now, what size?

Once the gearbox configuration that best suits the application has been identified, the design engineer will move
on to selection of the proper size of gear unit and motor.

This is not as simple as it might sound. For example, it is important to select a properly rated gear box with
adequate allowance for service factors, to take account of the number of starts, impact loading and the like. Then
the specifier must select an electric motor that is powerful enough for the job, but not too powerful. Excessively
large motors place unnecessary stress on all drive components (not to mention a large motors additional cost) and
will require torque limiting, while an under-specified motor is obviously likely to fail prematurely.

Siting, installation, orientation, shaft loading, lubrication, ventilation, commissioning and maintenance are all
engineering categories in their own right, which deserve the same attention as gearbox selection to achieve the
optimum result.