Cutting Cycle Times in Half with Power Engineering and Manufacturing
One-of-a-kind heavy gearboxes need a capable hobbing machine.
Power Engineering and Manufacturing (PEM) builds custom heavy-duty gearboxes in Waterloo, Iowa, for customers in defense, mining, and heavy industry. Their builds have included gearboxes for the Gateway Arch tram and the elevators that lift planes to aircraft carrier decks.
Every gearbox they build is bespoke, so there is no shelf stock of cut gears to fall back on when a machine goes down. When their aging hobber kept breaking down, jobs backed up fast. They partnered with Helios Gear Products and installed the Hera 500 CNC gear hobbing machine, cutting cycle times in half on the very first part they ran. Those gains have held job to job, and the team keeps finding new efficiencies as they work deeper into the machine's capabilities.
Half the cycle time on the first part, and improving.
Eliminating workarounds, scaling production.
The old machine needed a full power cycle every time the tooth count changed, or it risked cutting the wrong program into a fresh blank. Switching from spur to helical meant pulling out an involute chart and working the numbers by hand. On the Hera 500, the setup screen lays out the diagram and parameters for the current job. Finished programs are saved and reloaded rather than rebuilt from scratch, so operators bring a repeat job back up in a few button presses.
The relationship came before the partnership.
PEM's relationship with Helios began at Gear School, well before the Hera 500 was on the table, and the team found Helios's openness and willingness to share knowledge and tips incredibly valuable. After evaluating nine manufacturers, they chose Helios largely for the support behind the machine. Helios's service engineer, Edgar, installed and commissioned the Hera 500 within two days. PEM was trained and cutting production parts within five days and caught up on their backlog within three weeks. As PEM takes on new part types, Edgar returns to help create machine and programming customizations for their workflows, and he's reachable within the hour.
