Racing ahead into 2012
Typical T-type cluster gear produced by Mini Gears for the Autosport sector
After exhibititing at the Autosport Internation Show in January, Mini Gears set off to a racing start this year and hopes to repeat the success by returning to the show in 2012.
The show is a dedicated event for the motorsport and performance engineering sectors and takes place on the 12 and 13 January 2012 at the NEC.
On Stand E227 Mini Gears will have on display a range of the many new components it now manufactures for this industry as a result of customers it gained from this year’s show.
Mini Gears is a specialist subcontract manufacturer of gears, racks and machined parts for applications across a wide range of industries which require power transmission components.
Having purchased a Hoefler Helix 400K CNC Gear Grinding Machine to extend its production capability to include CNC gear grinding for existing customers, Mini Gears was now able to diversify into additonal markets and turned its focus to providing precision ground gears to the trade in the autosport sector.
Exhibiting at the Autosport International Engineering Show proved to be the ideal platform to launch Mini Gears into this market and, with seven new customers on board and a whole new range of components, its technical and production teams have been extremely busy.
One of the challenges came when the company needed to quote for parts that contained helical gears as part of a compound gear. Manufacturing compound gears and shafts, where various shapes and sizes of gears need to be machined in line from the same piece of material means that there is limited access for the cutter to cut between them as it is cutting up to a shoulder. The component has to be machined on a gear shaper. Mini Gears already had in place the facility to cut spur gears in a compound gear but to cut helical gears it needed to purchase new machinery. With this investment the company is now producing gear units typically used in classic car gear boxes such as the old MGs and the early Triumph TRs.
Other components that Mini Gears is now manufacturing as a result of this year’s show include gear and rack replacement parts for steering systems for TVR plus steering racks for a number of customers ranging from the latest up to date racing series through to classic cars where parts are no longer available.
This new market is fitting in well with Mini Gears’ production, as the company, in order to not disrupt the work on the regular turning and milling machines, recently purchased two XYZ CNC turning and milling machines to make lower volume production batches and prototyping for all aspects of the autosport industry.
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