A gear print and its data block, read into a quote sheet your estimator can start from.

Every gear quote opens with transcription. Someone pulls the number of teeth, module or diametral pitch, pressure angle, helix angle and hand, and face width from the data block, hunts through the notes for material and heat treatment, finds the quality class, and works out which inspection report the customer expects. Only then does the judgment start: whether you can cut it, on what tool, and for how much.

For the test, AI reads copies of those prints and drafts a quote sheet that holds each value as printed and where it was found, the quality class with the document it belongs to, the report asked for, and a separate list of items a person must decide. Price, hours, lead time and machine choice never appear on it. A value the print doesn't give stays blank.

A published list says what a print should state. ISO 1340, first issued in 1976, sets out what a purchaser should give a gear maker: a table, preferably at the upper right of the drawing, with module or diametral pitch, tooth count, basic rack, helix angle and direction, reference diameter, addendum modification coefficient, tooth thickness, tolerances, centre distance, and the tooth count and drawing number of the mating gear. On a sector, the count is for the whole gear the sector comes from, an easy one to misread. Any item a print leaves out becomes a question on the sheet.

On a helical gear, the plane is part of the number. ISO 1340 asks for the normal pitch on a helical gear, and not every print follows it. Writing in Gear Technology in 2018, Charles Schultz warned that transverse diametral pitch hobs with 20-degree pressure angles come both ways, some normal pressure angle and some transverse, that the two are not conjugate, and that to the naked eye many of these tools look alike. So the sheet records pitch and pressure angle with the plane each was given in. A print that doesn't say goes on the list to decide.

Tooth thickness can be written three ways. ISO 1340 allows a Wildhaber measurement across a stated number of teeth, a constant chord, or a measurement over pins or balls of a stated diameter, each with its upper and lower deviations. Information sheet AGMA 913-A98 exists to translate tooth thickness given by thickness, center distance or diameter into profile shift coefficients, which shows how much sits in that one cell. The sheet keeps the method, the count or pin size and the limits as written, and converts nothing.

A class means little without its document. AGMA 2000-A88 ran from Q3 to Q15, tighter as the number rose. ANSI/AGMA 2015-1-A01 runs from A2 to A11, tighter as the number falls. Edward Lawson, then chairman of AGMA's inspection committee, wrote in 2004 that comparing grades across standards is never really valid, while offering a rough rule of subtracting from 17, so Q10 sits near A7. The sheet carries the class with the document the print names, and any translation stays with your estimator.

Material, heat treat and the report request carry much of the scope. A 2010 paper to the Heavy Movable Structures symposium found bridge authorities fairly consistent in excluding carburized and ground helical gearing, so two identical data blocks can follow very different routings. The sheet shows material, process and hardness as called out, and whether the print or purchase terms ask for charts, case depth records or certificates. Your reviewer, usually the lead estimator, checks that each value matches, each plane and method is right, and the list to decide is what they would have asked. These are public documents, described for context and not as engineering advice.

With your reviewer's yes, new gear prints get a draft quote sheet for about 30 days.

An estimator reviews every sheet, sets the price and approves the quote, and nothing reaches a customer or your shop system without that person. A further job is a separate decision at its own price.