ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,338,885, issued on June 24, was assigned to HITACHI CONSTRUCTION MACHINERY Co. LTD. (Tokyo).
"Gear component" was invented by Kazuya Nonomura (Nishinomiya, Japan), Kunihiro Fukuda (Tsukuba, Japan) and Yuuki Tahara (Tsukuba, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This invention provides a gear component with high hardness of a surface layer in a tooth root and with the excellent bending fatigue strength. The gear component of the invention comprises a surface layer of a tooth root including a region in which the area percentage of carbides is 10% or lower and the number density of carbides is 6 pieces/10 micro metre2 or lower."
The patent ...