Product Focus – Planetary gear units

Planetary gear units are aptly named because of their operating principles. The basic design of a planetary gear unit consists of a sun gear, a ring gear and several planetary gears. The planetary gears are supported by the ring gear and rotate around the sun gear. Just like our solar system

They don’t suit all applications but in the right place, they are a brilliant solution and a brilliant gear design. One of the main advantages is the high torque and large ratios which can be achieved in an incredibly compact design. Some of the applications include wheel drives, cranes, winches, shredders, feeders, wind turbines, and water treatment thickeners.

Available with lots of output configurations I have listed some below along with advantages

HZ splined output can be used in conjunction with a WOA half coupling. This design is common on our thickener drives and means that the gear unit can be coupled directly to thickener rakes.

FP hollow shaft which comes with a GOA shrink disc. This allows the unit to be mounted directly onto the shaft and then clamped using the GOA. The unit then just requires a torque arm. We use this design most for feeders.

PHZ with a pinion on the output shaft which is common for driving shredders and slew rings.

PC foot mounted allowing the planetary to be fitted to a foundation and then coupled to the load via coupling or sprockets.

I think my favourite feature is the back-to-back roller bearings in the output! This allows for high axial loads in both directions and we can design them into applications where we can support the customer’s shaft. Makes design simple and cost-effective!