MHI Launches Totally Upgraded "ST40A" Helical Gear Shaping Machine,Achieving Japan's First Fully NC-Programmable 7-Axis System

The ST40A is a totally upgraded version of the ST40, a revolutionary helical gear shaping machine requiring no helical guide3 for each workpiece - a feat achieved through the world's first application of NC technology to torsional motion during the cutting of helical gears.

The ST40A has extended the ST40's cutting flexibility even further by incorporating Japan's first NC-programmable relieving mechanism and making all seven of the machine's axes fully NC-programmable. This new capability enables the ST40A to accommodate various high-precision cutting applications such as crowning and tapering.

In addition, stroke speed has been increased by 20%, from the earlier 500 strokes per minute to 600, enabling high-speed cutting with a focus on productivity. Stroke speed when machining at lower speeds meanwhile has been reduced by 50%, from 60 strokes per minute to 30, enabling secure cutting of hard workpieces. The new machine is also capable of tapering up to 0.3 degrees without use of a tilt table. In these ways, the ST40A has been designed to fully address diverse user needs, including demand for a broader range of optional devices and functions, and enhanced operability, safety and energy savings.

Today, interest in making capital investments into gear cutting equipment capable of machining diverse high value-added gears is escalating at gear production plants around the world, especially in the United States. The trend is fueled by the need to accommodate demand for high-volume production of gears associated with the growing tendency toward employing larger numbers of transmission gears in automobiles and construction machinery, and demand for gears made from harder materials associated with increasing production of small passenger planes. The ST40A can now firmly accommodate these expanding needs.

Gear Expo, a biennial event organized by the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA), is the world's largest trade fair dedicated exclusively to gear machining. It regularly attracts gear machinery manufacturers and users from all over the world, leading to brisk business negotiations. At Gear Expo 2013, MHI, in addition to the new ST40A, will also be showing its GE15A super-dry gear-hobbing machine that operates without the need for cutting oil. Both machines will be used to demonstrate how they can produce cluster gears of the kind featured in automotive transmission systems.

Today the U.S. manufacturing industry is regaining its former vigor spurred by the shale gas "revolution" and monetary relaxation. MHI aims to penetrate deeply into the U.S. market by proactively approaching manufacturers with optimal proposals integrating its diverse range of high value-added gear machines backed by the company's state-of-the-art technologies and cutting tools as well as its strengths in marketing and after-sale servicing leveraging the resources of Federal Broach Holdings, an MHI group company, and MHI's own sales bases in the U.S.