May 17, 2012
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Q&A with Carl Tarantino
GS: I know that mG miniGears has been involved inmanufacturing powder-metal gears for nearly twodecades now, but how did your company get involvedin working with powder metal in the first place?
CT: Back in 1985, one of our customersexpressed an interest in having us take a look intoproducing powder-metal products, and we decidedthat it would be a good area for us to branch outinto. Plus this customer had the high-volume needsthat justified the investment in tooling that powdermetal requires. So we saw it not only as a way tosatisfy our customer’s needs, but also as a strate-gic move in the right direction on our part.
GS: Where are your powder-metal operations based?
CT: At our world headquarters in Italy right now,but we’ll soon begin producing powder-metal gearsat our new manufacturing facility in Pudong, China,too, which is scheduled to go online later thisyear. We’ve just invested about $10 million in ourcut-metal facility here in Virginia Beach, so thecompany decided it would be best to focus itsresources on powder-metal tooling for the newChina operation right now.
GS: You’ll be stocking those products at your facili-ty, though, won’t you?
CT: That’s right. What we bring to the party, interms of mini gears, is that we already have a pres-ence in the United States market, so our customerswill be able to purchase from our stock instead ofhaving to buy a whole container load from a vendorin Europe or Asia who doesn’t have distributioncapabilities here. We’ll import product from our sis-ter company in China, warehouse it, and distributeit as required by our customers so that they don’thave to buy a whole boatload of stuff all at once.
GS: From a manufacturing standpoint, what do yougain from working with powder metal?
CT: Well, in a lot of cases you gain very detailedgeometry that could only be achieved by a forgingprocess of some type otherwise, which is overkillin some instances. So it provides us with geometrythat isn’t easily achieved through normal machiningprocesses, and it allows us to offer a reasonablycomplex piece that is very competitively priced, aslong as the volume is there.
GS: You say “competitively priced,” but isn’t it lessexpensive in some cases?
CT: Well, everything is a balancing act, sothere’s always a tradeoff. For instance, the tool-ing required to do cut metal gearing isn’t nearlyas expensive as powder metal tooling. It maytake $6,000 to get up and running on a cutmetal part, but it could cost as much as$26,000 for powder metal. If you’re looking at adecent volume, though—somewhere around30,000 or 40,000 pieces—then when you applythe tooling cost to the per-piece price, itbecomes almost negligible as time goes on. Justto give you an example, we’re making a cutmetal 1:1 ratio right-angle gear set right now thatwe sell for 88 cents apiece, and the customer islooking for a cost-effective way to introduce thenext generation at a lower price. With powdermetal, our quoted price is more along the linesof 18 cents apiece.
GS: That’s amazing. What’s the downside, though?
CT:Well, powder metal doesn’t have the samemechanical properties as cut metal does right now,but advancements have been made recently toincrease the density of the product so that themechanical properties are approaching those ofcut metal. We’re not quite there yet, but researchis definitely ongoing—and quite promising.
GS: How do you go about deciding which basematerials to use?
CT:There are a lot of different powder mixes thatyou can buy, including diffusion-bonded materialand others, but we primarily rely on about four orfive as our standard base materials. That’s basical-ly because we understand those materials wellenough to know how they’re going to respond dur-ing the sintering and heat-treat process. That famil-iarity is important so that you can predict whatmight happen during those processes and avoidany undesirable outcomes.
GS: Can you give me some sense of the applica-tions for which powder-metal gears are best suitedin the industries you serve?
CT: A lot of our powder-metal gears are used inmotion control, such as synchronizer rings formanual transmissions, as opposed to powergearing. They’re also used in the lawn and gar-den industry. For example, there’s a sprocket onthe end of a chain saw that guides the chain,and that’s a powder metal part. And in handpower tools, there are a lot of powder-metalgears that are used in angle grinders. They’reused across the spectrum of industries thatmake up our customer base, and we expect tosee a great deal of growth, in terms of addition-al applications, in the coming years.
For more information:
call Tarantino at (757) 627-4554, or send e-mail to carl.tarantino@minigears.com.Visit the company’s Web site at[www.minigears.com].
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