Solutions in Motion™

Industrial applications are typically complex. At W.C. Branham, Inc., we deliberately design our products with a multitude of configuration options because customers need an exact fit for their application. We design, build and sell our own products, but often our customer’s full scope of needs goes beyond our line of fluid power and power transmission. That’s why, for our U.S. customers on the West Coast, we have DJ Reps as a trusted partner. 

Most often, helical gears are associated with transmissions in the automotive industry. But they can also be used across many different industries, and are a good substitute for the commonly utilized spur gears — especially if noise is a factor.

Noise control is just one of the advantages of using a helical gearbox design in your application, but it's far from the only one. Here are some other benefits of helical gearboxes.

Nobody loves a good challenge more than our design and engineering team at W.C. Branham. We get many opportunities to exercise our creativity because almost 40% of the work we do involves some amount of custom design. It might be a small tweak to a standard product, or it might be something entirely new, designed from scratch.

Computer-aided design (CAD) software is such a great tool, especially because we can use it to design products in 3D! Our engineers can create, analyze, and modify any potential actuator — in some cases without ever having to manufacture a prototype. This is a huge boon for us and our customers.

Here at W.C. Branham, we do a lot of custom work. Although we make a tremendous variety of actuators with a wide range of configuration options, every industrial design is different. So, you could say almost every product we sell is customized in some way, even if it wasn’t uniquely designed from scratch.

Here's how we use 3D CAD design software to customize actuators.

Our catalogs contain thousands of brakes, gearboxes, and pneumatic cylinders, yet that doesn't come close to matching the demand for fluid power parts. In fact, almost 40% of our business comes from custom design, ranging from slight modification of catalog products through completely new designs to match a customer's needs.

So, how long does it take to order custom products, and what information do you need to get started? We tossed those frequently asked questions at the man behind our custom manufacturing process, WC Branham VP of Engineering and General Manager, Chad Randleman.

Mechanical engineers design and build things that work. Tools. Machines. Entire systems such as automated industrial machinery. Many of these mechanical engineering projects are highly complex. And every one of them is different. Yet, choosing the best design and components for each project follows a similar path.

The engineering design process is a basic progression of several steps that mimic the process used in almost any problem-solving scenario.  The difference between a basic analytical problem and an engineered design problem is that an analytical problem has only one solution whereas a design problem can have many potential solutions. The job of an engineer or designer is to determine which custom product solution is the best based upon what the most desirable outcome is.