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| Essential Power Transmission Private Limited (Esenpro) is engaged in manufacturing industrial gear units. Apart from the standard range, Esenpro specialises in custom-built gearboxes. The ratings of the units manufactured by Esenpro range from 0.25 to 500 horsepower. |
| Although the internal parts are standardised and mostly cylindrical in shape, designing custom gearboxes invariably involves developing a new housing. Some of these are intricate from the external constraints and also from the point of view of ensuring proper support and lubrication to the internal parts. In some of the cases, the lack of enough space requires the entire drive to be so laid out in a compact manner. This also necessitates the assembly sequence to be designed in a proper order. |
| If the quantity desired by a customer is low then, fabricated housing are made. However, for orders of larger quantities, the housings have to be cast. Conventionally, such housings are designed on paper and a number of cross-sectional and detail views are sketched. Then the various standard parts are overlaid to visualise the assembly problems. After the housing is designed, the next task is to explain all the areas to a pattern maker, who after detailed discussions makes the pattern. A few trial castings are taken and any modifications if necessary are carried out on the pattern before casting the necessary quantities. This process usually takes 4 to 6 months. |
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In one such critical situation, Protosys assisted Esenpro by first developing a 3D CAD model for the housing based on the preliminary 2D drawing that was available on paper. After verifying some of the aspects on the screen, a few changes were incorporated and the design was finalised. A scaled down prototype was also made so that the standard parts (also of smaller diameters) were put inside it thus trying out the complete sequence. While doing this it was observed that a minor changes were required on the internal sections. Certain areas required addition of material whereas some required removal. After physically modifying the model the desired changes were incorporated in the 3D model and the final set of drawings were given to the pattern maker along with the prototype. The model helped in reducing the communication gaps between Esenpro and the pattern maker and a perfect casting was obtained in the first trial. On the whole, Esenpro saved about 2 months of effort. Now, being convinced about the utility of such techniques, they plan to extend the scope of such techniques even to designing of patterns and making of core boxes. |
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