Q: How would you describe your company’s primary business?
A: KHK USA is a supplier of metric gearing designed for use in industrial automation applications. With over 17,000 standardized configurations of gear products, KHK USA is able to meet the needs of most engineering projects without the need to customize a unique component for every application.

Q: In brief, what is the history of KHK Gears?
A: KHK USA is a subsidiary of Kohara Gear Industry, operating as the North American engineering and sales support distributor. Kohara Gear Industry was founded in 1930 as a small machine shop and over time developed into a manufacturer of change gears. Recognizing the demand for standardized stock gearing, the KHK brand was born.

Q: How has KHK, as a company, changed through the years?
A: Kohara Gear Industry started as a small machine shop and through years of hard work and attention to quality, has become the premier brand of gearing in Japan. Beginning in the 1980’s, Kohara Gear began expanding their sales through independent resellers throughout the world. Beginning with KHK USA in 2015, Kohara Gear established their first factory owned distribution network.

Q: What questions do your customers frequently ask?
A: The availability of metric gearing is prevalent throughout the world but it is believed to be used in only 20% of the designs in the USA. This leads us into questions regarding diametral pitch gears vs metric gears, AGMA vs other gear standards and whether we also produce custom gears

Q: What advantages do you bring to your customers with your products?
A: Our advantage is that we offer the North American marketplace the broadest selection of metric gearing. We offer detailed 3D CAD models on our website, which are free to download, in order to provide the design engineer with a drop-in component for their design. They do not have to take the time to calculate the proper gear geometry in order to generate a gear for their assembly.

Q: What difficulties have you faced in the American market this year?
A: Our biggest hurdle is the marketplace for gearing. There are hundreds of small machine shops across North America that can produce gears and this fragments the marketplace. Additionally, as the market is only 20% metric, this limits our opportunities.

Q: What successes has KHK had this past year?
A: We have seen more potential clients migrating to metric components. This is due to globalization of both new and used equipment. Manufacturers looking to have worldwide serviceability of their machinery are building in metric and those shops that have foreign made equipment need metric replacement parts.

Q: What do you want to see in the future for the industry?
A: Since the wheel was invented and someone added spokes to the outside, some form of gearing has existed. In the past 100 years, the advancements in production methods, profiles and pressure angles, materials and heat treatments, have all contributed to making gearing a highly complex engineered component. However, the teaching of gearing is regulated to just one lecture, during one class, in one semester, of a mechanical engineering student’s four year education. I would like to see more education occurring during a BSME program.