Custom Engineered Flexible Couplings

While many coupling manufacturers have impressive standard product catalogs, as Murphy would have it, your application requires something special, a bit different, or a retrofit to a legacy design. For such custom coupling situations, leading coupling manufacturers have engineering teams on standby. 

Speaking specifically to Lovejoy, following principles of Quick Response Manufacturing (which focuses on optimizing high mix low volume manufacturers for speed), our coupling engineering team is actually comprised of two separate teams: the "Modified Catalog Team" and the "Engineered to Order Team"  (or "ETO"). 

Both are cross functional in nature. The "Modified Catalog Team" focuses on orders that are relatively simple variations or tweaks to existing product design. This team is comprised of application engineers, drafts persons, and technical customer service personnel. Their goal is speed. 

The "Engineered to Order Team" is comprised of Lovejoy's former Quality Manager, several design engineers, a manufacturing engineer, and a quoting engineer/technical customer service representative. This team is charged with tackling the hairy, messy, and complex requests.

When orders come into Lovejoy's customer service department, if a new design is required, it is funneled to one of these two teams based on a series of seven questions. If the answer is "no" to all seven, the order goes to the "Modified Catalog Team". If the answer is "yes" to any, the order goes to the "Engineered to Order Team". 

While "Modified" orders are expected to be turned around quickly, "ETO" couplings can take some time to design. By dividing work out in this way, quicker "Modified" orders are prevented from getting stuck behind nasty "ETO" ones. 

Once orders get to the "ETO" team, much like a hospital emergency room, orders get triage. Our former Quality Manager, who has limited purchasing authority, goes through the order to understand and ensure every requirement that must be met. If inspection gauging is needed that is not available, he can preemptively place it on order even before the design is complete. Similarly, he can get forging and other long lead items on order before designs have been finalized. (Dual path sourcing and design finalization allows precious time to be saved for our clients.) Once triage is complete, orders are assigned to design engineers who often then directly engage customers to work through any concerns and to receive print approvals, and everyone within this team is co-located within a few feet of each other to ensure quick coordination and communication. 

If you have a challenging or unique coupling opportunity, be it elastomeric (jaw, curved jaw, S-Flex, torsional) or metallic (gear, grid, disc), we would welcome an opportunity to serve you and show you our "ETO" Quick Response Work Cell in action. 

When Designing or Specifying a Custom Coupling – Lean on the Manufacturer!

If you are an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or perhaps a maintenance engineer accustom to working on unique legacy equipment, it is generally only a matter of time before you will run across the need for a non-standard non-“off the shelf” type coupling.

When this happens, it is important to reach out to a full line coupling manufacturer that you trust as early into the process as possible (which, often, may not be very early at all). The manufacturer will be able to discuss your unique circumstances, and perhaps be able to recommend either an alternative that you were not aware of and/or recommend the least cumbersome course of action.

More often than not, a well-equipped and staffed manufacturer will be able to modify a standard product for you rather than “re-invent the wheel”. In many ways, coupling components can be viewed like Legos® in that they can be configured in a number of ways. Modifying and adjusting based of an established catalog product not only saves time & money, but also benefits from relying on proven pre-existing designs and design concepts.

Pictured at the top of this article is a one half of a high speed, shear pin with bearing 8 bolt disc coupling developed by Lovejoy engineer Mark M. One of biggest design constraints on this project was a 12” between shaft ends (BSE), which was met with a unique design. Starting from an internal AutoCAD sketch, Mark and his team then used top-down design methodology and a suite of advanced Creo techniques which allowed the flexibility to iterate different configurations until this final design was reached.  The solution shown is driven by keyless calculated interference taper bores and Lovejoy supported the customer’s engineering team calculations by providing the coupling half center of mass, rotational inertia, and torsional stiffness.

No matter how complicated or complex (or simple) your application may be, a best in class coupling manufacturer will be able to walk with you, step for step, to ensure the coupling you require is satisfied in the most appropriate manner. Mark is a “proud father” of the coupling shown above, and, as part of Lovejoy’s premier “Engineered to Order Team”, takes great pride in being able to knowledgeably address many of the world’s most unique and intricate coupling demands.