Racks are portions of a cylindrical disk with an infinite radius which has involute shaped teeth cut into its face. Racks mate exclusively with spur gears that have the same module, pressure angle and preferably face width. KHK offers gear racks in many materials, configurations, modules and lengths. One unique feature of our racks is certainly that most are supplied with finished ends. This kind of production permits multiple racks to be butted, end-to-end, to produce one continuous amount of rack. Most of the products that people offer enable secondary functions such as for example reduction of the space, the adding of Metric Gear Rack tapped holes, or the application of heat therapy. Our offering also includes products which 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 apparatus shafts, it belongs to the parallel shaft category. The spur gear that meshes with a gear rack is generally called a pinion.
Besides equipment racks with straight series teeth, there are helical racks which have slanted tooth. Helical equipment racks are paired with helical gears, but because of the slant of the tooth path, as in helical gears, the mesh generates axial thrust forces.
Among the apparatus racks’ primary applications are 
machine equipment and transport devices so when the applications involve transmitting linear motions, they are often weighed against ball screws. In those instances, the main benefits of gear racks can be named such as being able to fulfill a heavier load by using larger modules and having no duration limitation by connecting equipment racks with finished ends. On the other hand, a good example of the disadvantages of equipment racks includes the occurrence of backlash.
When manufacturing equipment racks, because of their bar shape, bending often outcomes. In these cases, corrective procedures using presses tend to be employed.