Mechanical Components

Recent advances in the design and manufacture of spare parts have led to a significant reduction in the time taken to create replacement components for breakdown situations or for those that have reached the end of their service life. Digitalisation and new manufacturing techniques have paved the way for a dramatic improvement in lead times.

Ubiquitous in the car, truck and specialist vehicle industry, rotary latches make easy work of securing and remotely opening vehicle panels. They’re more typically used in applications involving bonnet, boot lid or storage compartments, e.g. on coaches, emergency vehicles or caravans etc. In these everyday situations we rely on comfortable, reliable manual operation to provide security and accessibility.

It can be a long and difficult journey for an engineer trying to navigate their idea from initial concept, through prototyping and into production. Darren Gilligan of engineering components supplier WDS Component Parts explains how the company has supported one particular inventor.

Elesa ZCR and ZCL rack and spur gear transmission elements are suitable for applications where, in addition to mechanical resistance, even quiet operations are required, with no need for lubrication maintenance. Over the last few decades, the evolution in engineering plastics and technopolymers has led to the availability of spur gears in plastic material featuring high mechanical strengths. 

Elesa are now offering units for all industrial purposes from simple desks and workstations to vibration damping and non-slip for heavy machines, food industry and biohazard applications. At the light duty end of the spectrum the LX series are designed with adjustment moulded into the foot. They are suited to application on instrumentation housings, office desking, bench top equipment, portable stands and displays or similar.

Kammerer Gewindetechnik has developed ball screw drives with cooled nut for use in machine tools. The cooled nut makes it easier to cool the ball screw drive. This improves the precision and prolongs the service life of the ball screw drives permanently and enables machine tools to work at greater speeds and with greater precision. Kammerer will present the new ball screw drives at EMO 2019 exhibition in Hannover.

Elesa now offer the broad range of their RE series castors and wheels in a variety of materials specifically oriented toward dealing with industrial surfaces, loads, operational requirements and environmental demands such as chemicals and temperatures. This large and diverse range of castors and wheels meet the challenges of applications from trolleys to stillages, mobile equipment to transit cases.

A spring steel spine on a P section gasket is a simple, effective way to provide an excellent gasket function for enclosure and vehicle doors. To date this has been achieved with an EPDM bubble sealing profile attached to a PVC spring carrier, however now EMKA have developed an integral section which combines both in one EPDM moulding.

Advanced Thermal Solutions (ATS) has expanded its line of flat and round copper heat pipes for electronics thermal management. More than 350 standard ATS heat pipes provide low cost cooling solutions for cloud and edge computing, electric vehicles, aerospace, agtech, robotics, medical and consumer electronics, data communications, telecommunications, HVAC and more.

Materials with high alloy content, known as super alloys or exotic alloys, offer enhance performance properties including excellent strength and durability, and resistance to oxidation, corrosion and deforming at high temperatures or under extreme pressure. Because of these properties, super alloys make the best spring materials for demanding working conditions, which can be encountered across various industry sectors.