Cut Teeth Only
Gear Manufacturing
Gear Manufacturing
You Make the Blank. We Make the Teeth.
Already have the equipment and expertise to manufacture your gear blanks, but need a partner for the teeth? Forest City Gear’s Cut Teeth Only (CTO) service gives manufacturers access to world-class gear cutting without outsourcing the entire component.
You supply the gear blanks and specifications. We handle the specialized gear manufacturing operations, including hobbing, shaping, grinding, and inspection, as required by the job.
With dedicated Cut Teeth Only resources, thousands of cutting tools in inventory, and decades of experience manufacturing precision gears, we can help you add capacity, solve a tricky gear-cutting problem, or simply get parts out the door.
What Is Cut Teeth Only Gear Manufacturing?
Cut Teeth Only is a manufacturing service in which you supply the gear blank, and Forest City Gear manufactures the gear teeth.
It’s a straightforward way for machine shops, OEMs, contract manufacturers, and even other gear manufacturers to access specialized gear-making capabilities by outsourcing while focusing on their own core processes in-house.
Depending on the gear geometry and requirements, Forest City Gear can provide processes including:
If you’re great at making the blank but would rather leave the teeth to the gear nerds, you’ve come to the right place.
Qualifying Cut Teeth Only orders can ship in 10 days or less.
When Does Cut Teeth Only Make Sense?
There are plenty of reasons a manufacturer might need gear-cutting expertise without needing a full-service gear manufacturing partner.
Cut Teeth Only can be a good fit when:
- You don’t have dedicated gear-cutting equipment. You can manufacture the rest of the component in-house and outsource only the specialized gear operations.
- Your gear department is at capacity. CTO can provide overflow capacity when your own machines are booked.
- You need a process you don’t have in-house. A particular geometry may require specialized hobbing, shaping, grinding, tooling, or inspection capability.
- You want to avoid an equipment or tooling investment. Adding gear manufacturing capability requires much more than buying a machine.
- You have a challenging gear. Our team can evaluate the drawing, geometry, tolerances, tooling, and inspection requirements to determine an appropriate manufacturing approach.
- Your delivery date is getting uncomfortably close. Our dedicated Cut Teeth Only resources allow qualifying jobs to ship in 10 days or less.
The goal is simple: keep the manufacturing operations that make sense for your shop, and let us handle the teeth.
How Does the Cut Teeth Only Process Work?
Cut Teeth Only is designed to make outsourcing the gear-specific portion of your component as straightforward as possible.
1. Send Us Your Drawings
Provide the gear drawing, quantity, material, quality requirements, applicable specifications, and desired delivery date. Our team reviews the job to determine manufacturability, process requirements, and tooling availability.
2. Manufacture and Send Your Gear Blanks
You manufacture the blanks according to the agreed-upon requirements and send them to Forest City Gear.
The condition and accuracy of the incoming blank matter. Dimensions, datums, runout, and other characteristics can directly affect the gear-cutting process and finished part.
3. We Cut the Teeth
Depending on the part, our team uses the appropriate gear manufacturing process to generate the required tooth geometry. Available processes include CNC hobbing, CNC shaping, and gear grinding, along with supporting secondary operations when required.
4. We Inspect and Ship
Completed gears receive the inspection required by the drawing and specification. Our analytical inspection capabilities can evaluate critical gear characteristics including involute/profile, lead/helix, pitch, runout, and surface finish.
Then we get your gears headed home.
Cut Teeth Only Capabilities
Our Cut Teeth Only customers have access to the same specialized equipment, tooling, inspection technology, and gear manufacturing expertise that Forest City Gear uses for demanding precision gear applications.
Key capabilities include:
- CNC gear hobbing: 17 CNC gear hobbers, with capabilities up to 16 inches in diameter, shafts up to 20+ inches, pitches from 3 to 200, and quality levels up to AGMA Class 12.
- CNC gear shaping: 7 CNC gear shapers for internal and external gear geometries, including parts on which hobbing is not an option due to part configuration.
- Gear grinding: 6 advanced gear grinding machines for hard finishing gears up to 24 inches in diameter and quality levels up to AGMA Class 15.
- Extensive tooling inventory: More than 7,000 hobs and 5,000 shaper cutters on hand, helping us avoid tooling lead times when the appropriate cutter is already available.
- Analytical inspection: Inspection capabilities for critical gear characteristics including profile, lead, pitch, runout, and surface finish.
Why Have Forest City Gear Cut Your Gear Teeth?
Gear cutting is a specialized discipline. The machines matter, but so do the tooling, workholding, process control, inspection technology, and—most importantly—the people who understand how all of those variables interact.
Forest City Gear has been manufacturing precision gears in Roscoe, Illinois, since 1955. Today, we produce gears for demanding applications across aerospace, space, defense, medical, robotics, transportation, industrial, and other precision-driven industries.
For Cut Teeth Only customers, that means you aren’t simply renting time on a gear machine. You’re gaining access to a team built around solving gear manufacturing problems.
And yes, we’re happy to work with other gear manufacturers, too. Sometimes you need more capacity, a capability you don’t have, or a hand getting an urgent order across the finish line.
We get it.
