Design engineers face continuous pressure to enhance product performance while driving down costs. For many devices, converting metal components to plastic is an effective way of achieving both goals.

The use of plastic gears is limited, largely because it takes special expertise to design them properly. Too, many engineers deal with gears so infrequently, that the seemingly complex discipline ...

This article was updated March 6, 2023. It was originally published Aug. 1, 2001. Gears—even plastic ones—need to be lubricated if engineers are going to coax the best performance out of them. In the ...

Makers, engineers and hobbyists who would like to automatically manufacture a variety of different size plastic gears you might be interested in a unique machine built using a little Arduino hardware, ...

Lower efficiency makes eco-friendly industrial nets and ropes fall short. That’s a trade-off we might have to accept. By Alastair Bland/Hakai Magazine Published Sep 16, 2023 7:00 PM EDT Add Popular ...

Automatic doors and gates are great, except when they fail, which seems to be about every three days in our experience. [MAD WHEEL] had just such a failure, with a plastic gear being the culprit.