E-mobility is taking hold around the world – and the automotive industry is changing. Many manufacturers are shifting from internal combustion engines to electric powertrains. The Ford Motor Company – a long-term partner of Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH – will be making most of the electric drive units for its European production at its UK transmission plant at Halewood near Liverpool. As before, Ford will be using Liebherr gantry technology, but for electric drive units rather than transmissions for internal combustion engines.

For the manufacturing of valves and valve kits, Linde Hydraulics GmbH & Co. KG invested in a production plant at the Ballenstedt site with five 5-axis machining centers from Grob, which are interlinked via the PHS 1500 Allround pallet handling system from Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH. This enabled the company to increase the output of this manufacturing line by 30%. The planning was quite a challenge: due to the high demand, not only did additional machines have to be integrated, but an alternative location for the plant in the historic production halls also had to be found during the project.

Pongi Gear Experts Co., Ltd. has represented Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH in Taiwan for many years. In 2022, it incorporated the Kempten company‘s bin picking software into its portfolio and set up its own demonstration and training facility for intelligent automation. Potential customers can evaluate the smart and intuitive system on a fully equipped cell with a camera, robot and simulation tool.

Liebherr has been offering specialist seminars for the gearing industry all over the world for over 20 years. The gear seminars are designed as a learning and networking platform for users, where Liebherr experts and speakers from universities and from the industry discuss practical topics and specific issues relating to gear technology. At the same time, they offer participants the opportunity to share their experiences.

In electric vehicles, the meshing of the gears can cause disruptive gearbox noise excitations. It is therefore becoming increasingly important for automotive manufacturers and suppliers of electric motors to identify and eliminate the causes of unwanted noise at an early stage. With the LHProcessMonitoring software, Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH has developed a tool that detects deviations during gear production. This saves costs and reduces rejects – and is therefore also of interest to manufacturers of conventional gearboxes.

With the PHS 10000 Pro pallet handling system from Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH, the machine tool manufacturer GROB in Mindelheim has automated its in-house production of machine components on two 4-axis machining centers and thus increased productivity by around 45%. The challenge here was not only to manage large parts weighing tons, but also a series of additional constraints that required highly individual solutions, as well as project planning where not a single day‘s work could be delayed.

Gear shaping is a robust and universal process for manufacturing gears – due to the geometries of some gears, no other machining methods are capable of producing the teeth. In order to offer even more versatility in this area, Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH has fundamentally revised and developed its LS 500 E gear shaping machine. A shaping head featuring an electronic helical guide and an interface for an optional chamfering device are now included as standard.

Gear skiving used to be a gear cutting method that was difficult to control due to its complex kinematics, but it now offers a genuine alternative to shaping or broaching. The synergy between machines, tools and processes provided by Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH’s Skiving³ technology package makes it possible to efficiently and flexibly machine an extremely wide variety of workpieces, including in small batch sizes. Skiving³ therefore crucially boosts productivity, quality and cost-effectiveness levels not just in series production, but in contract gear manufacturing as well.