Individual drive solutions for the automotive industry
We do not offer off-the-shelf gears, transmission components, or drive systems. We offer you a structured process that encompasses everything from the detailed design of individual components to the comprehensive development of gearboxes—drawing on the decades of development expertise of our sister company, Framo Morat. In doing so, we pursue a single goal: to provide you with the drive solution that best meets your requirements in all technical, economic, and quality-related aspects.
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Our development service
From individual parts through to complex drive systems
As part of our IATF 16949-certified process development, we design custom-fit gears and transmission components as well as optimally meshing gear sets for you, and advise you on the materials best suited for your specific application. Leveraging our many years of assembly expertise, we integrate the manufactured components into complete assemblies and actuators—including project-specific in-process inspections and end-of-line checks. Thanks to our close collaboration with our sister company Framo Morat, we are also your expert partner for the development and manufacture of custom drive systems.
Our holistic approach
Modern technologies and years of experience
Plastic is an extremely powerful material – as long as the application is properly designed with the right type of plastic. We are well acquainted with the properties of technical thermoplastics – based on our practical experience and our own research. This enables us to design gear systems with micro and macro geometries that satisfy the highest requirements.
More than 60 years of experience
We have been producing gear parts from plastic since 1963 and are one of the pioneers in the precision injection molding of plastics. We are familiar with the advantages and idiosyncrasies associated with every type of gear and every material, and can use this wealth of experience to realize the right solution for your application.
Our own basic research
To date, there has been insufficient data available on material properties relevant to gear teeth for plastics. For this reason, we have set up our own gear testing rig within our corporate group and are using it to test a wide variety of combinations of gear geometries and materials.
Close cooperation with production
We not only manufacture gear components, but also develop the corresponding injection molds. This allows us to incorporate injection-molding-friendly component design right from the start. We take draft angles and gate locations into account, as well as warping and shrinkage behavior, as early as the initial phase of a project.
The Development Process at the Franz Morat Group
We leverage the synergies within the Franz Morat Group to offer you the drive solution that best meets your requirements. The ISO 9001:2015-certified development process at our sister company Framo Morat involves several phases—from the initial specification and design, through the selection of the appropriate gear type and gear tooth design, to the choice of materials and the design of components suitable for injection molding.
Specifications
Creating a specification together provides the basis for the development process. In the first meeting between you and our development team, we get to know you, your application and your precise requirements for the new drive solution. The following criteria play a decisive role:
- Load spectrum of the torque and speed
- Transmission
- Efficiency
- Noise
- Installation space and weight
- Backlash
- Interfaces to motors, sensors, and control systems
We use this data and work together with you to develop a detailed specification profile that will serve as the basis for our product development process.
Design
Our development team will transfer your requirements into a first functional prototype during the design process. Fundamental decisions are then made at this stage:
- Which types of gearwheels are best suited to your application?
- Which materials could be used?
- How many development stages are required for the particular transmission?
We then use the answers to design the gear system.
Design of the gear system
We map out the macro and micro geometries in the design of the gear system and tailor them to your application. As there is currently only a VDI guideline and no calculation standard for the design of plastic gear systems, we base our work on our own empirical dataset that we have built up over many years.
By defining your specific priorities for the design process, we can optimize the gear system based on the following factors:
- Load-bearing capacity
- Noise performance
- Efficiency
- Space
- Weight
- Service life
Incidentally: The material-based design of the gear system is more than just the sum of our previous experience. It also relies on our own basic research. Using our own in-house plastic gear test stand, we examine the properties of various different materials and gear geometries – and thus continuously expand our dataset with every new development process.
Selection of materials
For many applications, technical plastics have now taken over from steel – if they have been properly selected and designed for the right type of application. Nevertheless, the empirical dataset of characteristics and properties for those materials relevant for gear systems remains sparse. We are well acquainted with the properties of various different polymers – based on our many years of experience and our own research that ensures our own dataset is constantly growing. We can work with:
- All types of thermoplastics such as POM, PA6/66, PA11/12, PA 4.6, PBT, PC, PEI, PPA, PPE, PPS and PFA
- A wide variety of fillers and reinforcing materials
- Highly temperature-resistant plastics such as PEEK
On this basis, we realize plastic gear components, plastic/metal composites and technical components with complex geometries.
Design of injection moulded parts
How can the desired gearwheel be produced later on? What is the best way for the plastic to flow into the tool? And how can the finished tool be removed? Precision injection molding gives us a lot of geometrical freedom but also has its own idiosyncrasies. We already start to consider the producibility of the parts during the first development steps, and also take the following factors into account at an early stage:
- Geometrical changes to the wall thicknesses and supporting ribs
- Draft angles
- Injection points
- Warpage and shrinkage characteristics of the plastic
Evaluation of the types of gearwheel
A transmission or gearbox is not only produced in many different stages, but also using various different types of gearwheel and associated housing parts. Our development portfolio covers the following variants that are evaluated for use in the specific application:
- Spur gears
- Planetary stages
- Helical gears
- Worm gears
- Special gears and special gearwheels
- Transmission components with complex geometries
Development of the transmission
The development of a transmission or gearbox covers all of the previous described, upstream development steps. To produce a complete transmission or gearbox, we provide you with all the necessary components:
- Shaft and shaft-hub connections
- Housings
- Bearings
- Lubricants
- Sealants
- All other transmission components
Production and evaluation of prototypes
We use prototypes to comprehensively test assemblies and actuators even before we produce the production tools. This allows us to jointly check whether our solution meets all of your requirements and gives us the opportunity to optimize the individual components for series production.
In order to shorten development times, we produce all of the components in the prototype in-house using the following technologies:
- 3D printing machine with FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) and ABS plus plastic
- 5-axis CNC milling machine for processing the metals and plastics
Transfer to the tool construction and production stages
Following a successful evaluation process, we pass on the project to the production department. The next step on the path to series production is to produce the plastic injection molding tools–which is carried out in-house, just like all of our other processes.