Faster Tool Delivery and 40% Longer Tool Life with Forest City Gear
Flight-critical gears can't wait on tooling.
Forest City Gear is a job shop in Roscoe, Illinois, known for fine- and medium-pitch loose gears. Most of its work serves the aerospace industry as a second- or third-tier supplier to aerospace and military primes, with additional work in space, commercial, and off-highway applications. Its gears go into flight-critical actuators, starter turbine generators, and other high-value assemblies that can't function without them.
When the incumbent supplier of solid carbide cutting tools for several long-running legacy part numbers couldn't deliver on time, Forest City Gear turned to Helios Gear Products.
Custom carbide tools in three weeks that outlast the incumbent.
Custom solid carbide tools in hand in three weeks.
Helios returned pricing and delivery options within two business days of the request for quote, and the applications team built Forest City Gear's cautionary points about the job into the tool scope from the start. With expedited delivery, the solid carbide tools, built to custom proportions, went from purchase order through acceptance drawing approval to in hand in three weeks.
Helios standard delivery runs two to four weeks shorter than the incumbent's, and the expedited option cut lead time to roughly half of the incumbent's. Repeat orders have arrived on time with consistent tool quality.
Longer tool life, more parts per sharpening.
The Helios tools delivered about 40% longer tool life than the incumbent's on the first sharpening, and held a 30 to 40% advantage after resharpening removed the coating from the tool face. When customer demand ramped up seasonally, that extra tool life let Forest City Gear push feeds and speeds harder and get more parts from every tool and every sharpening, freeing capacity to keep deliveries on time.
The relationship began when Jared Lyford, Forest City Gear's director of manufacturing operations, met Helios applications engineer Michael Weas at an industry networking event. Today, Forest City Gear gets tools from Helios that are cost-competitive, outlast the incumbent's, and arrive faster.
