Racks are portions of a cylindrical disk with an infinite radius which includes involute shaped the teeth cut into its face. Racks mate specifically with spur gears that have the same module, pressure position and preferably face width. KHK offers gear racks in many components, configurations, modules and lengths. One unique feature of our racks is usually that most are supplied with finished ends. This kind of production permits multiple racks to end up being butted, end-to-end, to create one continuous amount of rack. Most of the products that people offer allow for Metric Gear Rack secondary procedures such as reduction of the distance, the adding of tapped holes, or the use of heat treatment. Our offering also contains products which have already had a few of these secondary operations completed.
The straight tooth cylindrical gear for which the radius of the pitch cylinder is infinite and in a bar form is named a gear rack. If it’s sorted by the positions of the gear shafts, it belongs to the parallel shaft category. The spur gear that meshes with a equipment rack is generally called a pinion.

Besides gear racks with straight series tooth, there are helical racks that have slanted the teeth. Helical equipment racks are paired with helical gears, but because of the slant of the tooth path, as in helical gears, the mesh creates axial thrust forces.

Among the gear racks’ primary applications are machine tools and transport devices and when the applications involve transmitting linear motions, they are often compared with ball screws. In those instances, the main advantages of gear racks could be named such as having the ability to satisfy a heavier load by using larger modules and having no size limitation by connecting gear racks with finished ends. However, a good example of the disadvantages of gear racks includes the occurrence of backlash.

When manufacturing gear racks, due to their bar shape, bending often results. In these cases, corrective processes using presses tend to be employed.