Forest City Gear has expanded its turning and milling operations with a state-of-the-art facility designed to greatly improve lead times and quality for the production of precision gear blanks.

This highly productive 8,500 sq. ft. facility is in close proximity to Forest City Gear’s main facility in Roscoe, IL, and now dedicated almost solely to the precision turning and milling operations needed to produce precision gear blanks. That’s very good news for Forest City Gear customers, says Forest City Gear Turning and Milling Supervisor Mike Miller.   

“This gives us complete control over the quality and delivery of the blanks (and slugs) that are the ‘near net shape’ starting point for many of the gears we produce,” Miller said. “The types of projects we take on here at Forest City Gear for customers around the world have never been more demanding from a quality and delivery standpoint. If we start off a project with turned blanks out of tolerance, or waiting for blanks from a supplier, this can ultimately create a devastating production bottleneck when operations upstream are sitting idle waiting for product to arrive.”

According to Miller, the facility, with its four late-model CNC lathes, three CNC machining centers, and dedicated Zeiss CMM, easily meets current capacity requirements, and gives the company much additional room to grow. Two Mazak Quick Turn 250 Turning Centers will arrive later this year to further expand capacity, and future plans call for the addition of a 5-axis machining capability for the production of small planetary housings and carriers.