Gears and Gear Trains
Achieve the right torque, low noise, durability, back drive, and more with Enplas gears.
Custom Plastic Gears to Optimize Your Mechanical Power Transmission
Enplas designs and manufactures custom plastic gears that maximize the performance of your application, be it durable, quiet gears for electric cars or precision gears for quality laser printing. As a leader in custom plastic gear manufacturing, Enplas sets the standard for gear design, engineering support, material selection, manufacturing, and quality.
Total Plastic Gear Engineering Solutions | High-Performance Plastic Gear Development & Manufacturing
Types of Plastic Gears Designed & Manufactured
Customers come to Enplas when their products require precision gears that absolutely cannot fail, including critical applications like brake systems, liftgates, door locks, or high-end laser printers. Enplas provides engineering and quality manufacturing for customers seeking high-performance gear solutions.
Gear Applications
Enplas serves gear applications with critical functionality and high quality standard requirements:
Automotive Power Liftgates | Brake Systems | Thermal Management | Automotive HVAC | Electric Throttle Valves | Smart Home | Automotive and Home Door Locks | Printers and Copiers | Drug Delivery | Water Meters | Drones | Robotics | and More
Gear Types
Our popular gear types include:
Spur Gear | Helical Gear | Worm and Worm Wheel Gear | Planetary Gear System | and more
Find out more about the types of gears Enplas design and manufacture.
Custom Planetary Gears and Gearbox
Planetary gears are seeing rising demand for hatchback liftgates and smart homes. However, planetary gears require significant expertise in gear engineering, as they entail the precision design and manufacturing of multiple gears that affect each other and the careful assembly of gearboxes. With decades of experience in high-performance plastic gears, Enplas can help design and manufacture the entire planetary gearbox to meet (and exceed) your performance targets.
Plastic Gear Materials
Enplas works closely with customers and resin suppliers to select the ideal materials for the application at hand. We mass produce injection-molded parts with a wide variety of engineering-grade plastics, filled or un-filled. The plastics with which Enplas has achieved world-class quality include:
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) | Polyoxymethylene, a.k.a. acetal (POM)—both copolymer and homopolymer | Polyphenylene Sulfide (PPS) | Nylon | Polycarbonate (PC) | Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) | Polyether Imide (PEI) | Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) | and more.
Gear Design and Manufacturing Services
Total Gear Solutions from Design and Prototyping to Mass Production
Enplas customers reduce their development cycles and time-to-market when they work with us. That’s because Enplas offers start-to-finish services, including everything from designing the right gear to full manufacturing and stress-free project management. Our typical projects follow these phases:
Product Design and Development | Tool Development | Simulation (Plastic Flow Analysis) | Tool Building | Tool Testing & Optimization | Internal Tool Qualification | External Tool Qualification | Injection Molding & Assembly
Our engineers are at your service to help you make your plastic gear concepts become reality.
Science-Driven Gear and Gear Train Designs
Whether you need full development from the ground up, troubleshooting assistance, or DFM (Design for Manufacturability), Enplas is there. Enplas designs, evaluates, and modifies all plastic gear components. In addition, we design gears and gear trains that are scientifically evaluated to achieve the required performance based on our material and gear performance database and various measurement technologies.
Troubleshooting Your Gear Development
With over a billion gears produced in our facilities, we understand the troubles and issues with precision mechanical designs. Whether you need durability at a specific torque, a longer-lasting gear, or adherence to a particular noise level, we deliver the performance you need through science. Bring Enplas into your development to solve development questions, such as:
- My gear breaks at the required operating torque – why?
- My gear’s current periodic noise level is 50 dB(A). I want to reduce this to 40 dB(A).
- Which plastic material should I use to make durable, precision gears?
- What is the optimal gear train to achieve my goals?
Rigorous Gear Testing & Validation
Each gear and gear train is rigorously tested on Enplas’s performance-centric evaluation equipment. We analyze durability, torque, noise, and meshing efficiency while considering your performance specifications. From temperature control to soundproof spaces, our metrology facility maintains an environment that eliminates interference and measurement errors. Precision metrology and statistical analyses validate your gear’s projected performance and confirm reliable design parameters. Get your gears tested with Enplas before product release to avoid preventable issues.
Plastic Gear Prototyping
Enplas’s special rapid quality prototyping services can significantly shorten turnaround time for your gear prototypes, while meeting production-grade quality. This means customers can fit in more iterations of testing within the same project schedules. We offer rapid quality prototyping for the following gears:
Worm Gears | Compound Helical + Spur Gears | Compound Spur + Spur Gears | Spur Gears | Planetary Gears | Ring Gears
Plastic Gear Manufacturing Services
- Gear Tooling: Enplas applies precision machining with conventional and innovative toolmaking technologies in its world-class facilities to manufacture intricate gears with consistent teeth and roundness.
- Gear Injection Molding: Enplas injection molds over a billion gears with unwavering quality. The high volume, high quality productions are made possible by our precision molds, scientific molding, robust quality assurance system, and automation capabilities.