Racks are portions of a cylindrical disk with an Metric Gear Rack infinite radius which has involute shaped the teeth cut into its encounter. Racks mate solely with spur gears which have the same module, pressure position and preferably face width. KHK offers gear racks in many materials, configurations, modules and lengths. One exclusive feature of our racks is usually that most are supplied with finished ends. This kind of production allows for multiple racks to be butted, end-to-end, to create one continuous amount of rack. Most of the products that people offer allow for secondary procedures such as for example reduction of the length, the adding of tapped holes, or the use of heat treatment. Our offering also contains products that have already had some of these secondary operations completed.
The straight tooth cylindrical gear that 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 equipment that meshes with a gear rack is normally called a pinion.

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

Among the gear racks’ main applications are machine tools and transport devices so when the applications involve transmitting linear motions, they are generally compared with ball screws. In those cases, the main benefits of gear racks can be named such as having the ability to fulfill a heavier load through the use of bigger modules and having no duration limitation by connecting equipment racks with completed ends. However, a good example of the disadvantages of equipment racks includes the occurrence of backlash.

When manufacturing equipment racks, due to their bar shape, bending often outcomes. In such cases, corrective processes using presses tend to be employed.