Gleason Corporation

Gleason Corporation (formerly Gleason Works) is a prominent machine tool company based in Rochester, New York, USA. It has manufacturing plants in the USA, Britain, India, and Germany, and sales offices in those and additional countries.

Gleason's importance lies in gear manufacturing—specifically, in building the machine tools that themselves make gears. These gears and these machines are sold to industrial customers in a wide variety of fields, including prominent companies in the automotive and aerospace industries. Gleason pioneered mass production of automotive spiral bevel gears in the US after settling an infringement law suit with Packard, the original inventor, patents US725328 and US1209682 of we call today Gleason spiral bevel gears US patent 1325784. However, more productive and less expensive manufacturing process for manufacturing of spiral bevel gears has been used in Germany. In the result of the World War II, Gleason received an advantage versus German competitor and established its gear influence in Europe. While Gleason spiral bevel gears are offered in Europe, the native for European market Klingelnberg and Oerlikon gears are more popular and offer better benefits in mass production for European automotive industry. It is not a secret that fuel economy of European cars is better compare the cars produced in the US, partially thanks to use of spiral bevel gears on drive axles as an alternative to lower efficiency hypoid gears that are commonly used on US cars and trucks.

History

Gleason Works, the machine shop that eventually evolved into the Gleason Corporation, was founded by Irish immigrant William Gleason in 1865 after his previous experience in other machine shops.

An important product came in 1874 with William's invention of the first bevel gear planer.

Willam's daughter Kate was integral to the company's early operations, along with brothers James E. and Andrew C.

In 1927, Gleason Works was the first machine tool builder to create machine tools to cut hypoid gears. [ [http://www.americanprecision.org/component/option,com_easygallery/Itemid,78/act,photos/cid,78/ American Precision Museum's biographical sketch of James Gleason] ]

Organization Structure

Gleason was a publicly traded company under the symbol 'GNE' on the New York Stock Exchange. In December 1999, it agreed to be acquired by its chairman and chief executive, the senior management, the Gleason Foundation and private equity firm Vestar Capital Partners [ [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB944749135343802895.html Wall Street Journal Market Roundup] ] .

There are multiple companies under the Gleason Corporation umbrella:

* The Gleason Works: The original company, located at Rochester, NY.

* Gleason-Pfauter Maschinenfabrik GmbH: Originally 'Pfauter', based in Ludwigsburg, Germany, acquired by Gleason Corporation in 1997. [ [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-19540501.html Gleason to acquire the Pfauter Group - Business Wire - HighBeam Research] ]

* Gleason-Hurth Maschinen und Werkzeuge GmbH: Located at Munich, Germany.

* Gleason Cutting Tools: Located at Loves Park, IL

* Gleason Works (India) Private Limited: Located at Bangalore, India.

* Gleason-M&M Precision Systems: A company specializing in Gear Metrology Products, acquired in 2005, based in Dayton, OH.

* Gleason Gear Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd: A 'Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise' founded by the Gleason Corporation in Jiangsu, China in 2006.

References

External links

* [http://www.gleason.com/ Official Gleason Corporation website]
* [http://spiralbevel.com/ Alternative method of spiral bevel gear manufacturing]

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