Understanding the Shaft Manufacturing Process
A gear or shaft is a toothed wheel that meshes with another shaft’s teeth to continually transmit rotational power. Engineers can mix and match gears and shafts of different diameters to vary the force and speed of these components’ rotation.
Shafts have several important uses in the aerospace, agriculture, automotive, consumer products, transportation, oil & gas, mining, and industrial manufacturing fields. These tools generate and channel force in a wide range of mechanical equipment, from cars and planes to machines and appliances.
In this post, we explore a few aspects of the shaft manufacturing process, as well as how we use innovative techniques to manufacture shafts for the industries we serve.
How the Shaft Manufacturing Process Works
The most common process used to manufacture shafts is via CNC turning. Using this technique, workers or automated processes affix or clamp bars of materials to chucks and rotate them. While rotating, specialized tools use cutting and other subtractive processes to create and shape the end product.
KFS’s Shaft-Manufacturing Capabilities
KFS works with over three dozen types of raw materials to produce high-quality shafts that adhere to client specifications. We build shafts from materials ranging from:
Ferrous metals: standard carbon steels, stainless steels, Inconel and titanium
Non-Ferrous metals: aluminum, brass, bronze and other exotic or precious metals
Plastics and other polymers
Graphite and other non-metal materials
We also work with a vast array of part sizes, with our capabilities listed here as they apply to the following dimensions:
Diameter: We build parts as small as 0.10” diameter and as large as 15” diameter
Length: Our parts range from 1” to 60” in length
Face groove depth: We build shafts with face groove depths of no more than 1”
Weight: Our typical shafts have a maximum weight of up to 1,000 lbs.
MACHINING PROCESSES
We bring many types of machining processes to bear when it comes to shaft manufacturing. A sample of our production capabilities includes:
Boring
Drilling
Turning
Internal and external threading
Internal and external spinning and teeth cutting
Rotary Broaching
And more
We also perform a diverse array of secondary services to fine tune the product to your specifications. Some secondary service options we provide include:
Anodizing
Plastic mold insertion
Assembly
Bending
Broaching
Heat treating
