Over my spring break in March 2025 I had an amazing opportunity to work with Andrew Prestridge and his team at Evolvent Design down in Ventura County. Andrew gave an amazing tour of his shops showing me his Original early 1900s Pfauter Gear Hobbbing machines, CNC Lathes and Mill, his manual Okuma Lathe and much much. Through the week Andrew gave me numerous lessons on everything gear hobbing, ranging from the extremely useful calculators they created for things like change gear ratios and feeds speeds for your hobs, Gear dimensions including center distance and measurement over pins which allows to to measure your gears to know when the teeth are just the right size. After going over some math and getting a idea of what it takes to get set up for hobbing gears we headed to his Original Pfauter Gear Hobbing Machines. Andrew covered more than I ever could have expected, running through the conventional stuff like what the buttons do and how things move, but he didn't stop there and explained what and how every part of the machine work, I found this to be extremely beneficial in understanding the machine as a whole. Soon enough I had the processes down and was hobbing gears in no time. The gears we were manufacturing are going into the Gearbox of our 2025 Chico State Baja Car, Andrew was super eager and happy to help us out by inviting us into his shop and giving us a week long lesson on everything gear hobbing and trusting us to run all his machines. Huge thankyou to Andrew for making this happen and supporting our team, is was an amazing unforgettable experience to work with you guys.
