The gearbox that just failed was installed in 1994. The manufacturer has been acquired twice, the model is long out of production, the drawings are missing and the plant cannot run without it. This is a common and expensive position, and it is solvable more often than operators expect.
Connect Australia provides authorised sourcing support for redundant, critical and no-longer-manufactured industrial, mining and agricultural gearboxes.
Configurations covered
- Bevel-helical.
- Planetary.
- Inline-helical.
- Worm-shaft.
Typical power range: 50 kW to 1.5 MW.
How sourcing works
- Establish the real requirement. Ratio, torque, mounting, shaft arrangement, duty cycle, service factor and the physical envelope available. Nameplate data alone is frequently wrong or illegible.
- Understand why the last one failed. Ordering an identical replacement into an unchanged root cause buys the same failure again on a delay.
- Search the paths that exist. Equivalent current-production units, cross-referenced alternatives, surplus and redundant stock, remanufacture and repair.
- Verify. Availability and suitability are confirmed technically and with the supplier for your specific application before anything is committed.
- Coordinate. Lead time, freight, installation interface and commissioning support alongside your maintenance team.
Why this is worth doing properly
The obvious answer to an obsolete gearbox is a full drive redesign, and sometimes that is genuinely correct. It is also the most expensive and slowest option, and it is often chosen simply because nobody had time to search properly. A structured search frequently finds an equivalent, a remanufacture path or a redundant unit at a fraction of the cost and lead time.
Where our work stops
Connect Australia does not provide legal, tax or financial advice and is not a law practice, tax agent or financial adviser. We work with your preferred provider or, with prior disclosure, can introduce an independent partner for you to assess and choose. Product availability and suitability remain subject to technical verification and supplier confirmation for the particular application. Where formal engineering certification is required for a substitution, it is provided by an appropriately qualified or registered practitioner.
Common questions
We do not have drawings or a legible nameplate. Can you still help?
Usually. Ratio and geometry can be established by measurement and inspection, and the driven equipment and motor data narrow it considerably. Photographs of the unit, the mounting and any casting marks are a good first message.
How quickly can a critical unit be found?
It depends entirely on the configuration and what exists in the market. What we can do immediately is tell you which paths are realistic and roughly what each implies for cost and lead time, so you can make the shutdown decision with actual information.
Should we hold a spare?
For genuinely critical drives with long lead times, the arithmetic usually favours it. That is a decision about production risk rather than engineering, and it is worth doing deliberately rather than discovering the answer during a breakdown.
Start with a confidential fit check
The first conversation is short and costs nothing. We want to understand the decision you are facing, the deadline attached to it and whether this is work we should be doing at all. You do not need to send documents at that stage.
If the matter is a fit, the next step is usually the $850 initial strategic consultation, which includes up to one hour of pre-reading and a one-hour meeting.