Gear couplings offer efficient torque transmission in a compact mechanism and permit a high degree of axial movement. However, gear couplings require piloting and may malfunction at very high or very low torques. Crowned tooth flanks allow angular displacement to occur between each gear. Read More…

Leading Manufacturers
DieQua Corporation
Bloomingdale, IL | 630-980-1133Our shaft couplings are the best around! Not only do we provide you with exceptional levels of customer service but we also provide you with manufacturing and a repair service that you can count on. We are also capable of providing you with special designs. That’s right! Our design team will work closely with you in order to ensure that you are getting the product that will fit your specific requirements perfectly! Call or email us today for more information!

Ruland Manufacturing Company, Inc.
Marlborough, MA | 800-225-4234Ruland’s carefully made shaft collars, rigid shaft couplings & zero backlash motion control flexible shaft couplings, including beam, Oldham & bellows couplings, are available in both inch & full-metric dimensions. Our line has expanded to include metric shaft collars, metric rigid couplings & step bore rigid couplings. For 70 years, we have supplied custom-made products to meet special needs.

Hersey Clutch Company
Orleans, MA | 508-525-2533Hersey Clutch has been in business since 1963. With that kind of background and experience we have becomes leaders in application engineering. We specialize in finding solutions to our customer's problems regarding industrial power transmissions, brakes, clutches, couplings, universal joints, gearboxes, speed drives, friction material, crane electrification and more. Let us help you today!

US Digital
Vancouver, WA | 800-736-0194US Digital designs and manufactures flexible shaft couplings for motion control, automation and robotics. We ship standard products directly to domestic and international customers. We also offer optical encoders, inclinometers and switching power supplies plus other products.

Ringfeder Power Transmission
Westwood, NJ | 888-746-4333Ringfeder is a component and system provider with a global presence. Serving all industries including packaging, automation, energy, mining and transportation and defense. Ringfeder offers premium products including locking devices, shaft couplings and dampening technologies. Included in the coupling line are torsionally rigid disk, elastomeric and backlash-free servo-insert and metal bellows couplings.

Two coaxial shafts can also be connected by a single joint gear coupling, known as a gear-type flexible or flexible coupling. Slight misalignments of 0.5° to 5° are tolerated by this type of gear coupling.
Gear couplings and universal joints are used in similar applications, most predominantly in the automobile industry. While gear couplings have higher torque density, universal joints induce lower vibration than gear couplings. The gear teeth in a gear coupling have high backlash, which can contribute to vibration, to allow for angular misalignment. Gear couplings are found in all rear-wheel and four-wheel driven passenger cars.
In a gear coupling, the two shafts being joined meet in the third shaft which contains gears. The teeth interlock with each other to rotate and, in doing so, they transfer torque, power and energy. Every gear coupling has differing stall speeds, which is the highest speed that the gears can turn when maximum input power is applied. Flexible shaft couplings such as gear couplings are necessary because during operation, some types of shafts tend to shift, causing misalignment.
Shaft movement is caused by bumps or vibration and it results in parallel, angular or skewed shaft misalignment. Flexible shaft couplings provide efficient accommodation for moderate shaft misalignment that occurs when the shafts' axes of rotation become skewed. There are many different kinds of shaft couplings. The bellows coupling has two hubs and a thin walled metallic bellows and can accommodate all three types of misalignment.
Single beam couplings are usually made of a single piece of aluminum and have a system of spiral cuts that allow it to bend in order to accommodate angular misalignment. Multiple beam couplings consist of two to three overlapping beams that address problems of torsional rigidity. The Oldham coupling consists of three components: two hubs and a central plastic disk. It accommodates slight parallel misalignment, while providing almost zero backlash.