Intech POWER-CORE Drive Gears for Metal Plating Drum

Application Background

Plating of metallic parts is often done in very aggressive chemical solutions. The parts are placed in a drum, then the drum is lowered into the chemical solution. A set of gears rotates the drum within the solution, to ensure that the parts are coated evenly.

The original drive included a stainless steel sprocket and a chain. The chain generally broke after less than a week in operation. It rusted to the point that the torque required to rotate the drum broke it. Replacing the stainless steel chain every week became very costly.

Intech's engineers proposed an Intech Power-CoreTM gear drive. The larger gear has cast-in InconelR inserts on the bolt circle where the gear is attached to the drum. Since the smaller gear is not submerged in the chemical solution, a stainless steel core was sufficient.

Using specially developed software, Intech's engineers designed the gear drive to last 8000 to 10000 hours of continuous operation under normal operating conditions.