Planetary Gearheads

Woodward's planetary gearhead has high torque capacity per unit weight and volume as well as low backlash and high stiffness.

Woodward is an industry leader in the design and development of planetary gearing for aerospace and defense motion-control applications.

Size & Capacity
Woodward offers planetary gearheads in an array of sizes in inch-series diameter codes from Size 8 to Size 80 (.8" to 8") commensurate with our standard servo motors. We furnish these units as complete vehicle level line-replaceable units (LRUs), including hinge lines, as required by the overall system design philosophy.
Woodward's planetary gearhead features high torque capacity per unit weight and volume, as well as low backlash and high stiffness. The output bearing pair span in Woodward's planetary gearhead architecture provides maximum radial stiffness against the mating forces of the payload. We can optionally supply the output pinion of the planetary gearhead split and torsionally spring loaded against itself, to eliminate backlash to the payload's mating gear.

Read more about Woodward standard servo motors.

Higher Ratio
In order to develop higher ratios in minimal volume, Woodward can cascade or stack planetary sections. Once the payload has been isolated by the first planetary section it is usually more efficient to look to our matching spur gearheads or hybrid planetary gearheads in order to develop the remainder of the desired ratio most effectively.

Read more about Woodward spur gearheads.

Woodward's hybrid planetary gearhead is a unified architecture that provides some spur gearing interfacing directly to the planet gears so as to develop additional ratio in a very minimized volume.