Gearbox repair quotes, drafted from the teardown report your inspector already wrote.

A teardown report is written for the shop. It has the nameplate, the ratio, the serial number and any earlier repairs, then notes on each gear, bearing, shaft, seal and housing, then measurements, photos and the inspector's remarks. The quote has to say the same things in the plant's terms: what was found, what gets replaced, what labor it takes, and whether rebuilding or buying new makes sense.

For the test, AI reads copies of those reports and drafts the quote: nameplate data and ratio, part conditions found, parts and labor lines from your records, and a list of everything the inspector left open. It does not decide what can be reused or whether a unit can go back in service. Every price comes from records you sent, and a person on your team makes those calls.

The buyer's own wording shows what a quote has to carry. The Nebraska Public Power District's 2022 solicitation to refurbish a triple reduction gearbox at Gerald Gentleman Station asks for an inspection report with visual observations, measurements, non-destructive crack examination results, recommended part replacements, the service work to be performed and a cost for each part or service. The work proceeds on the engineer's approval of that report. A draft that gets the findings right and leaves off a per-part cost has not answered that buyer, so the draft shows which of those items each report actually holds.

A report can stop short of a decision. One sample failure report published for conveyor engineers lists the gearbox type with its 20:1 ratio, the serial number, the supply date and two earlier repairs, then records a poor contact pattern on the bevel set, burnt black oil and pitting on a first intermediate pinion. It still concludes the bevel set can be reused, calls the shafts reusable pending magnetic particle inspection, and says no oil tests were done. Those are the moments the draft keeps as they stand. It carries the pending test as an open item and doesn't price the job as though the shafts passed.

The vocabulary is standard, and the verdict is not. ANSI/AGMA 1010, on the appearance of gear teeth, describes the classes of common gear failures and degrees of deterioration, and it says it does not define gear failure, because that depends on the application. ISO 10825-1 gives the same kind of nomenclature internationally. ISO 15243 classifies bearing failure modes by what can be seen, and says that methods such as cross sections or chemical analysis, needed when appearance can't settle the root cause, fall outside its scope. So the draft keeps your inspector's words and never grades a tooth or a race itself.

Rebuild or replace is a lead-time question as much as a price question. A quote attached to a 2012 emergency purchase resolution from the City of Spring Hill, Tennessee, sets out a wastewater aerator's gear reducer two ways: a rebuild with 15 weeks' lead time on parts, or a replacement at 14 to 18 weeks after order, each for the reducer only, without removal or installation. The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District's 2020 rebuild of a thickener drive states the other half: reuse the gears and shafts, and if they prove unusable a replacement may be quoted or the owner may have them repaired. The draft lays both options side by side with what each leaves out.

Nameplates and oil have their own language, and your reviewer reads for all of it. A drive may be rated by a service factor or by a service class of I, II or III, generally translated to 1.0, 1.4 and 2.0 in sizing, so the draft copies whichever the plate shows and converts nothing. ANSI/AGMA 9005 gives lubrication guidance for enclosed and open gearing and says it doesn't replace the gear maker's instructions, so the oil line comes from the plate or the maker's sheet. Your reviewer, usually the shop manager or senior inspector, checks that ratio and nameplate data match the report, that no condition was softened, that every open item survived into the quote, and that nothing reads like a promise the unit is fit to run.

If your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, new teardown reports go through the same drafting for about 30 days.

A qualified person checks every repair recommendation, settles every open item and approves each quote before it posts anywhere or reaches a plant.

The month has a fixed price you see before signing. Anything after it is priced as its own job.