There were several former J&L people working at Fellows Gear Shaper, so I felt somewhat at home. Fellows was the second largest employer in town, now the largest due to the problems at J&L. At the time I was hired, they had been acquired by The Goldman Group, an investment firm. The on-site management team included a Mr. Joe Smith, a sour man who had some sort of disability, and got around in an electric cart. His wife ran the mailroom. There were some Goldmans there from time-to-time, but I never interacted with them. I was a new hire, an engineer from J&L, and I basically had to start from scratch learning a new set of rules and regulations. Each company has these, developed over the years to suit their particular industry and personality; Fellows was no different. So quite a lot of what I had been taught at J&L had to be suppressed, to make room for The Fellows Way.

Being within walking distance from my home was really great; unless the weather was bad, I walked every day. Fellows had a modern cafeteria at the plant in North Springfield, and they put on a great lunch. Engineering was located on the second floor, along with the sales department. Over the years Fellows was a leader in gear cutting technology; they not only sold gear cutting machines, they also had their own gear cutter department. Their cutters were considered the Cadillac of the industry, and a big part of their income. Every new engineer was required to attend a one week seminar that explained all of the components of a gear tooth; involute, pitch line, base circle radius, etc.. I still have the two workbook handouts from that class.

One of my first assignments after hire was to complete a design concept that had been started by a former engineer who had left the company. One of the products offered by Fellows was a gear shaper to cut coarse, variable pitch teeth on a steering sector shaft. These parts were used on recirculating ball steering boxes, found today mostly on trucks and large vans. These gear teeth were cut on an angle off the centerline of the shaft itself. In the past, a sector gear shaping machine would be built with the upright (the part of the machine that held the cutter), at the proper angle to cut these teeth. So that machine would be “dedicated” to being able to cut only parts with that one particular angle. If a company had several different sectors to cut (with several different angles), multiple machines would be required. This new design would allow for the upright angle to be adjustable. Because the cutting action of a gear shaper is basically all interrupted cuts, the adjustment and locking mechanism had to be able to hold up to the constant vibrations that occur. This feature was greeted with much customer enthusiasm, as one machine could now cut sector gears of multiple angles, using what were called “sine blocks” inserted and clamped for each angle required. I believe the first two machines of this design were sold to a Korean company.

Because most of todays cars have rack-and-pinion steering systems, these sector shapers are not as popular as they once were.