This year’s Hermes Award was won by Wittenstein AG. One of the world’s most prestigious innovation prizes, the Award was presented to the company at the Hannover Messe Opening Ceremony.
“Wittenstein AG is synonymous with technological expertise and innovative spirit”, said Dr Jochen Köckler, member of the managing board at Deutsche Messe. “The company has been exhibiting at Hannover Messe for many years and, year after year, has been showcasing new products in the field of high-precision electromechanical drives. The winning product is a completely new type of gearhead featuring Industry 4.0 connectivity. This makes it an excellent fit for this year’s lead theme: ‘Integrated Industry – Join the Network’.”
Wittenstein AG received the Hermes Award for its product “Galaxie” – a high-performance gearhead with independently movable gear teeth arranged in such a way that all surfaces of each tooth are able to engage with the teeth of the fixed outer ring gear. As a result, the Galaxie’s force-transmitting surface contact is more than six times greater than that of conventional gearheads. The teeth are driven by a combination of a polygon on the input shaft and, on the output side, a segmented antifriction bearing and a tooth carrier with segmented outer bearing ring. The meshing pattern is a logarithmic spiral. The Galaxie outperforms all other gearbox designs in terms of torque density, torsional stiffness, zero backlash and compact form. It is also more energy-efficient and is suitable for a range of applications, including machine tools, robots, wind turbines and textile machinery.
The Hermes Award was presented by Dr. Johanna Wanka, Federal Minister for Education and Research: “The Galaxie high-precision gearhead is an outstanding development and a prime example of Germany’s innovative drive.”
The other nominees besides Wittenstein AG (Igersheim, Germany) were: ABB Automation GmbH (Mannheim, Germany), ContiTech (Hannover, Germany), Next Kraftwerke GmbH (Cologne, Germany) and SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG (Lauffen/Neckar, Germany).