• Gleason Works Private Limited

Workholding Equipment for Windpower Gears

Gleason, the complete gear solutions provider, offers X-Pandisk® Workholding Equipment for Windpower Gears. The increasing requirement for large gears means that bore- type parts weighing up to two tons are needed in large numbers. The X-Pandisk workholding equipment has resulted in workpiece changeover time being reduced by up to 70% compared to conventional manual workholding concepts. This is achieved by means of automatic clamping and centering of the workpiece. The X-Pandisk workholding equipment is also designed for automatic loading to make production in medium to large-scale series even more economical. The key component is the X-Pandisk, which centres the workpiece. The workpiece is not clamped in the axial plane by the pressure cover until the centring process is complete. It is this segregation of centring and clamping operations which allows such high workpiece weights (up to 2 tonnes) to be centred accurate to < 30 ?m. Cutting windpower gear changeover time up to 30%: with diameters well over 1 mtr, weights of several tonnes, and particularly high accuracy requirements, large cylindrical gears used for windpower have always been time consuming and expensive to load and align. Like most windpower gear manufacturers, Eickhoff Wind Power GmbH, Kipphausen, Germany has used cranes and manpower for the job. Now with the help of Gleason's X-Pandisk workholding system and its automatic centring capability, Eickhoff has reduced the time needed for this process by 1/3, while at the same time meeting required alignment accuracy of ±0.02 mm.