First Gear: The Roots of the Fall Technical Meeting

How did you first learn about gearing? If you’re like most people I’ve talked to, your initial exposure was likely a chapter or two in a survey college course.

Now that you’re in the gear industry, how do you stay up to date with the latest gear research? Reading Gear Technology, of course, is a good answer to this question, but you may further answer that you hunt down the rare gear paper presented in journals and conferences that cover a much broader scope of engineering topics than just gearing alone.

The premise of the AGMA, since its founding in 1916, has been to serve the gear industry. The tradition of informing the industry of the latest technology goes all the way back to when the first AGMA technical papers were presented at the inaugural AGMA Annual Meeting in 1917. The very notions of standards themselves were the topic of the day back then, with papers such as “Job Gearing—To What Extent Can It Be Standardized,” presented by Frank Burgess of Boston Gear. It is fascinating to look at the history of gear standards and see how often the cutting-edge research of the day, presented at AGMA meetings, made its way into the standard industry practice of the future.

AGMA meetings have attracted, and continue to attract, gear luminaries, such as Earle Buckingham with his first AGMA publication, “Wear on Gear Teeth,” presented at the 10th AGMA Annual Meeting in 1926. Even to this day, his books Manual of Gear Design and Analytical Mechanics of Gears are mainstays on the gear engineer’s desk. Darle Dudley, author of another famous gear textbook, Dudley’s Gear Handbook, was also a frequent AGMA presenter, with his first paper “Cutting and Hobbing Worms and Gears” presented at the 26th Semi-Annual Meeting in 1943. And as a testament to the international appeal of AGMA, three out of the four authors of the widely used German gear textbook, Maschinenelemente 1, have presented papers for AGMA.

Over the years, the AGMA event that had attracted the most technical-minded folks was the AGMA Semi-Annual Meeting. To better signify the scope of the meeting, it was renamed the AGMA Fall Technical Meeting (FTM) in 1979—a name and tradition that has continued to this day. In 1986, the FTM launched the first AGMA Gear Expo with 22 exhibitors. The tradeshow quickly grew to be the premier event to physically see the latest products in power transmission manufacturing, and now boasts on average 150 exhibitors at the renamed, biannual, Motion + Power Technology Expo trade show.

Today, the FTM continues to be the best venue to get all the latest information on gear research in one place. You can self-select as a technology leader and carry on the tradition by joining us from Monday, October 17th to Wednesday, October 19th in Chicago for the 2022 FTM. Registration and lineup of the 26 planned presentations are available on the AGMA website.

We hope to see you in October!

agma.org/events/fall-technical-meeting-ftm