Indian gear industry can compete global players

Coimbatore-based Shanthi Gears is today a part of the Rs.27,500 Crore Murugappa Group, one of the leading industrial houses in India.  The company with a long history of manufacturing high quality, high precision gears, gearboxes, geared motors and gear assemblies, has come out with a whole range of innovative gearboxes for main hoist applications for capacities beyond 350T.  Recently it has developed an Accurate Missile Positioning Gearbox with zero back lash, capable of operating at temperatures  ranging from -40 degree to 140 degree Celsius.  The company’s products designed for arduous applications are also used in traction motors in high speed trains, cement mills, gas turbines, thermal power projects, battle tanks, mining drills and such other critical areas. Mr. P.K. Balasubbramaniian speaks to Mr, Debashis Chattopadhyay, Head-Sales & Marketing, Shanthi Gears Ltd. to discover the strengths, capabilities and new thrusts of this homegrown manufacturer poised to spread its wings and reach out to the world with complete drive solutions in mechanical power transmission.  Excerpts:

Q.What are the new trends in Mechanical Power Transmission?
There are various devises being used for transmitting Power from Motor to Machine, like Belt Drives, Chain Drives, Gear Box, etc. depending on type of application, shaft locations and amount of Power required to transmit at what rpm. Major challenges involved while transmitting power is that how efficiently you are doing so i.e the efficiency of the drive. That’s why the entire world is now working towards energy efficient, compact drives. For Gear Industry, the trend is to go in for more and more planetary drives so that high torque can be transmitted with minimum space.

Conventional gearboxes like standard worm Gearboxes which becomes less efficient as you want to have more reduction ratio, are being designed with special double envelop profile which can be as efficient as 98%. Gear accuracy in terms of Lead, Profile and Pitch are also an important factor and we can observe that even for general applications Customers are now insisting for ground gears with improved DIN class of accuracy. Straight bevel gears are now being re-designed with Spiral Bevel profile with DIN Class 3 or less for more area of contact and higher efficiency. The Customers today are more knowledgeable and looking for technically advanced products.

Q.How does your organization keep in step with them?

We, at Shanthi Gears, are always oriented towards delivering “Quality” to our Customers. We have a strong team of 12 Engineers at our R&D center who are constantly working for product innovation and providing support to our Engineering Department.

Our Design Engineering department is also equally strong, managed by more than 45 Design Engineers, who are designing gear boxes as per application requirements and life expectancy. Almost 70% of our production is Custom-built and special application based product, designed to suit Customer requirements. We are the only Indian Company, who have designed and supplied with our own capability a VRM Gearbox for Roller press application and it is working even better than overseas OEM supplier for more than 2 years.

We are constantly investing on latest machinery which can deliver best quality gears with lowest production cycle time. Equipped with the latest machinery with skilled and experienced workforce coupled with our in-house Design and R&D facility, we are able to take up newer challenges and emerging as the most potential Indian manufacturer to replace import substitute products and develop new products for critical applications.

Q.What’s your niche and what are your product innovations?

We have developed a lot many products in recent times. Major application involved for Ladle tilting operation, where the product is extremely critical from the application point of view. Apart from this, we have developed Gearboxes for Main Hoist applications for capacities 350T and above. Currently, we are designing Gearboxes for 450T cranes. These are some of the biggest in the Indian market. We have a large population of such gearboxes in the Indian market.

Recently we have developed and supplied an Accurate Missile Positioning gearbox which requires zero backlash operations and should be capable of operating at extreme temperatures ranging from minus 40 degree to 140 degree Celsius.

We have also developed gears for High speed trains which are mounted on Axle with traction motors and are supplying gears to various Global players in Germany, Australia and also in India.

In addition to the above, we have developed gearboxes for Cement Mill applications for both Roller press and Ball press grinders, High speed turbine gears for Gas turbine applications, Air-preheater gearbox for Thermal power projects, Ring gear and Planetary gears for 4500 HP and 5000 HP Turbo charger applications along with very critical gears required for Battle tanks, Mining drill and a host of other applications.

Shanthi Gears have recently ventured into product development for Marine main propulsion gearbox which can be used for both Defense marine applications such as Aircraft career, Amphibious transport Dock, large offshore patrol vessel as well as submarine applications. Our R&D teams is already working on this project and we are in an advanced stage of developing such products with time-bound delivery.

Q. Quality, precision and reliability are the major attributes end-users look for in transmission products. How do you instill these in your products?

Today, Customer feels that Quality is a term, which is given. We should ensure the same. Unfortunately, because of price competition, some of the Indian manufacturers are forced to dilute the same, which bears a negative impact on product performance and reliability. A few manufacturers are also engaged in importing substandard products from China and other countries and selling to Indian market by putting their own brand as a short term goal. These may dilute our year long struggle for developing quality products with the tireless efforts of our Indian engineers for so many years.

We, at Shanthi Gears are inspired by the Spirit of Murugappa Group, which are Integrity, Passion, Quality, Respect and Responsibility. These are the driving forces for us and we are constantly enriching ourselves with these.

For the basic raw materials like Steel, Forgings, etc. we have restricted our source to hardly 3 to 4 most respected manufacturers in India. Most of our Forgings are sourced from Companies like Bharat Forge, Western India Forge, Kalyani Carpenter, etc. For Bearings, we do buy the same directly from the manufacturer from their various Global Manufacturing units and restricted to world’s best brands such as SKF, FAG, INA, TIMKEN, etc.

We have 9 quality centers within our factory at various work stations apart from one main Quality Centre. We do maintain 100% quality checks at each stage of operations and our rejection rate is even below 0.03% at the time of final assembly and delivery. We ensure that only a correct and bestcomponent goes inside the Gearbox.

We are very proud of our products and we know, what we are delivering to our Customers are the best-in-class. We never compromise on our product quality standards and we are committed to deliver the best. That is our value proposition to our Customers.

Q.Please throw some light on your manufacturing capabilities and wherewithal?

We are having probably the largest manufacturing capability in India with latest machineries available in the world. Apart from that, we are the only Indian company having integrated Gear manufacturing facility with In-house Foundry, Forging facility, Gear manufacturing including latest Heat Treatment facility and also In-house hob making facility.

With more than 4 decades of expertise, equipped with ultra-modern and well backward integrated facility, we manufacture gears weighing from a few grams to more than 40 tonnes, from Textile loom gears to Aviation gears, from simple Worm gearboxes to complex planetary helical / bevel helical gear boxes from standard gears to custom made gears for all Applications.
Our Engineering department is well equipped with the latest hardware and software for 3D Modelling and 2D Drafting, Analysis (FEA), Assembly and Animation, Reverse Engineering, Tooling (Mould & Pattern) design & Manufacturing, Generation of NC codes and simulation etc. These enable us for shorter delivery and quick developments. We undertake Re-Engineering of existing gears and gearboxes, for any Plant and Machinery to enhance their capacity, in order to withstand higher speed, feed and load within the available space.
The key strength lies with our Huge manufacturing facility supposed to be the biggest in India which includes our state-of-the-art Heat treatment facility. It is a very vital and critical process to increase the surface hardness in order to reduce wear and keeping the core tougher for withstanding higher loads and longstanding performance of gears. Our heat treatment shop is the most modern and the biggest in India. It is equipped with the latest computer controlled equipment like pit type carburizing furnaces (max. 2500mm dia. ), tempering furnaces, oil quenching tanks and also a VACUUM carburizing furnace from SECO / WARWIK. We also have electrically heated pit type vertical sealed retort furnace for gas nitriding and gas nitro-carburizing with washing, shot blasting and shot peening facilities. We have the very latest CNC testing equipment for hardness checking and raw material microstructure analysis in our heat treatment laboratory.

The Gear Cutting and Gear Grinding Machineries are the current generation and latest imported CNC of superior quality from reputed manufacturers from Germany & USA. The gear measuring equipment we have is the most sophisticated and from the best brands like Klingelnberg / Wenzel / Leitz . Further, we are the only company, perhaps in the whole world to have a full pledged facility to make its own cutter tools.

The accuracy of products mainly depends on the machines on which they are produced. To ensure the reliability of the measured dimensions, the inspection instruments are calibrated periodically. We have set up our own full-fledged Calibration facilities in house in order to check any instrument as and when required. Our Lab with controlled temperature and humidity is equipped with Trimas Lab concept – 0.3-micron accuracy and 0.1-micron repeatability (Traceability with NABL), 50X Nikon computerized profile projector, Zeiss contour checking, Zeiss surface roughness testers. We are equipped with our own latest Renishaw Laser ML 10 Gold, Ball Bar QC 10 including rotary axis, with auto error compensation compatible to CNC systems like Siemens, Fanuc, Heidenhain, etc. With this equipment we are able to carry out Calibration of machine tools, Calibration of Co-ordinate Measuring Machines, and even the performance evaluation of machine tools.

Shanthi Gears is backed by Rs.27,500 Cr Murugappa group, one of the leading Industrial houses in India. We have our in-house support for corporate strategy Group, Corporate Strategy sourcing, In-house Technology Centre and Training centre to mentor and develop our key strengths in related areas.

Q.What’s the difference you make as a solutions provider?

Our major strength lies on providing most advanced and technical solution to our Customers considering Cost and efficiency of the drive.

All our Sales Engineers are trained to handle any Gearbox issues. Our engineers can reach any Customer’s place within 48 hours, to redress his issues. We have the capability to develop internals of other make Gear boxes or provide a Gear solution from any Imported Gearboxes or other gear related problems.

We have more than 12 dedicated Service Engineers and over 33 Sales and Service Engineers spread across India through our 10 Branch offices in most prominent locations. Apart from them, we have a dedicated Mobile team available at our works at Coimbatore, which comprises members from Engineering, Manufacturing, R&D and Production, who attend to the most critical calls related to new Gearbox designs or tackling critical Gear problems.

All our service engineers are typically trained to handle any type of problems and are equipped with most modern instruments for providing on-site service.

Q.What are your comments on ‘Indian engineering’ and how are you geared to make a significant contribution from your domain in its pursuit of excellence?

Indian Gear Industry is now more matured and can compete with any Global players in terms of Designing, Delivery of quality products and also provide on time service. Further, Indian market is having its own demand and is growing very fast. Considering the above facts, almost all Global players are looking for a foothold in the Indian market through any existing manufacturer or by way of taking support from its manufacturing base to nearby country.

We, at Shanthi Gears are planning to focus more on niche segment of products to develop Critical Gears and Gearboxes, which are so far getting imported from various European countries. We are also planning to invest more on modern machinery apart from strengthening our R&D and Engineering team.

We do also have an aggressive plan to reach our Customers through modern IT systems, where Customers can not only place orders on-line, they can get basic information on Drive efficiency, Power calculations as well as on-line PD drawings for checking their design layouts. We have already started working partially for Textile Gears with the above concept and started getting encouraging response from the market.

We have also planned to expand our Service network across India and conduct more training sessions to our Customers by way of sharing knowledge on various Gear related issues and Case Studies in terms of Real Life Situations. We want to establish ourselves as the only manufacturer in India to provide Complete Drive Solutions in the field of Mechanical Power Transmission Engineering.