Founded in 1886 and headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Horsburgh & Scott (H&S) is one of the world’s leading providers of custom industrial gears and gearboxes. This company has built a skilled, elite team that sustains its imposing 139-year legacy while paving the way for future growth through experience and innovation.
H&S offers a wide range of industrial gearing repair and servicing options, including the ability to accurately identify any gearbox issue and advise clients on the best course of action for maintenance, repair, or replacement. With its top concern being clients’ production schedules, the company provides a thorough assessment of scope before beginning any job. Because it stocks its own materials, speeding up the process, the company can often complete the typical six to ten-week project in just four weeks, and complete rebuilds even quicker.
Key capabilities
With many decades of experience creating, producing, and servicing gearboxes for heavy-duty applications worldwide, the technical team at Horsburgh & Scott handles a variety of gears with speeds ranging from 0.5 to 3600 rpm and up to 5000 HP and 4 million ft-lbs., together with the ability to design and build a bespoke gearbox for any specific use the client requires.
Over the years, H&S has expanded to include offerings such as on-site field service and major overhauls, laser alignments, and the reverse engineering of components that need to embody fit, form, and function within the precise confines of the host unit.
“The company has many other in-house capabilities that allow it to meet and exceed our customers’ expectations,” says President and CEO Randy Burdick. “This includes our very own on-site fabrication department for gears up to 26 feet in diameter and our state-of-the-art heat treat facilities for both carburizing and induction hardening.” These particular capabilities enable the H&S team to control for both unparalleled quality and speed of response, he adds.
A team of experts
With its rich history and a knowledgeable and skilled workforce with massive, industry-leading experience in large, complex gearing applications, the H&S team is often sought out by customers to resolve gearing issues where others have failed.
“With our extensive engineering, fabrication, manufacturing, and field service capabilities, we offer a great level of confidence to our customers,” Burdick adds. “We return their critical assets to a like-new, reliable condition, and we meet the time-sensitive deadlines that are everywhere today.”
In addition, the skilled technical staff at Horsburgh & Scott can provide clients with finite element modeling services, further increasing the company’s capacity to address clients’ intricate gearing and gear drive system problems.
Burdick is enthusiastic about this advance. “This, coupled with our extensive reverse engineering, vertical manufacturing, and field service capabilities, positions the H&S team to ‘Deliver the Difference’ in everything we do.”
Partners in reliability
The H&S field service team members are not just experts in gearbox installation, repair, and rebuilding; they are their customers’ reliability partners, ensuring the smooth and efficient operation of critical drive systems. With a steadfast commitment to “Delivering the Difference,” Burdick tells us how they set the standard of excellence in the industry for field service, bringing extensive expertise in the design, manufacturing, installation, and repair of a wide variety of gearing and units.
“These include speed increasers and reducers, helical units, bevel units, planetary gears, worm drives, spur gearboxes, cycloidal units, differential units, and high-torque and high-speed units,” he explains. Activities also include the design of custom drives for a clean sweep of applications in steel, pulp and paper, tire and rubber, plastic extrusion, power generation, sugar, grain, marine, cement, water management, container terminals, aerospace, bridges, mining, and oil & gas. In addition, there’s the design, fabrication, and manufacturing of spur, helical, and double helical gears up to 26 feet in diameter.
“No matter the complexity of the gear system, our skilled technicians perform repairs and rebuilds to the highest standards in the field to ensure the reliability and efficiency of the drive and application,” Burdick says. “We are a company that is tailored to a customer’s needs, whatever the complexity or the industry.”
Talented people
When asked what has shaped the company over its impressive 140 years and fomented its continued success, Burdick cites several reasons, including the team’s unique engineering and manufacturing capabilities and a dedicated workforce. “Additionally, our knowledgeable and devoted commercial team works closely with our customers and can move quickly and efficiently when our customers are in a time of need,” he adds.
While H&S has experienced its fair share of challenges over the years, recently the challenge has been to find talented people with the dedication it takes to uphold H&S’s commitment to its customers, says Burdick. “Also, maintaining a supply chain that can perform with the speed and dedication that the H&S team expects of itself to service our customers at the highest level can be difficult,” he says.
But even in the face of challenges, achievements are meant to be celebrated, and some of these include the company’s tripling in size over the past six years, diversifying its end markets, and expanding the number of opportunities that are available to support gearing and gear drive systems replacements or repairs.
“We’ve also made two significant acquisitions over the past two years that have put us closer to our customers,” says Burdick. To facilitate Horsburgh & Scott’s entry into the maritime sector, the company has also obtained ABS certification.
Reverse engineering moves forward
In addition to the company’s many advantages and rich expertise, Horsburgh & Scott stands out thanks to its committed staff as well as its production, engineering, and services. “Our extensive reverse engineering capabilities are available both in the field and in any of our many service centers,” Burdick shares. “Our reverse engineers utilize FaroArms for in-field reverse engineering when customers can’t come to us.”
There are also dedicated CMMs and gear checkers in climatized environments for when the client can send in their equipment for a comprehensive reverse engineering overview.
Additional services include detailed inspections and evaluations, dynamic modeling and optimization, no-load spin testing, equipment evaluation/analysis, gear alignment installation and startup supervision, lubrication system evaluation, nondestructive testing (NDT), preservation and long-term storage, rebuilds of all manufacturers, spare OEM parts, and 24/7 rush breakdown service.
A modern laser welding technique from Horsburgh & Scott also guarantees that shaft journals are precisely welded and long-lasting, ensuring performance in even the most challenging settings by minimizing distortion and maintaining perfect dimensional integrity with the application of concentrated, localized heat.
The company’s precision laser welding, meanwhile, ensures long-lasting joint integrity that prolongs the life of equipment by offering durability, excellent fatigue resistance, and endurance of repeated cyclic loading. Whether machinery powers a petrochemical plant, steel mill, or mining operation, H&S’s welded components are made to withstand the most difficult challenges.
Additionally, to safeguard customers’ goods during transportation and storage, H&S provides the best gear rust prevention solutions available, including water-based rust preventatives (vapor corrosion inhibitors) that offer continuous protection for long-term storage, are easy to apply and do away with dirty oils or greases, and are designed to prevent rust and the costly damage it causes.
From the standpoint of design, production, installation, maintenance, repair, and replacement, the company covers the entire product lifecycle of its clients’ gearing and gear drive systems, both H&S-branded and competitors, Burdick stresses. “Our philosophy of ‘speed kills the competition’ is deep-rooted in the culture of H&S, and this, combined with our commitment to quality, brings significant value to our customers, especially in times of need,” he adds.
Illustrious past, investment in the future
With an ever-present focus on the customer, Horsburgh & Scott aims to continue investing in both its people and the equipment that enables the company to serve its customers to the highest standards in the marketplace.
And while the company has experienced robust recent growth, it is looking for more. In the next three to five years, the team plans to double its business organically and through strategic acquisitions.
As Burdick explains, “We will continue to expand into different geographies and continue expanding our service offerings and capabilities, all to better support our valued customers.” This is an approach this company has well understood for nearly 140 years.
