A Cut-Teeth-Only project (or CTO project) is a service where the customer provides the gear manufacturer with pre-machined blanks or partially finished parts, and the manufacturer then performs only the final gear cutting operations to complete the part to the customer’s exact specifications . This is a niche but valuable option for several scenarios.
- First, if a company has in-house machining capabilities (lathes, milling machines) for turning and boring but lacks gear cutting equipment (hobbers, shapers, or grinders), they can produce their own blanks and outsource only the tooth generation.
- Second, CTO can be cost-effective for small batches where the customer already has the raw material and setup for the blank, avoiding the manufacturer’s overhead on those operations.
- Third, it can be faster for repeat orders because the blank production is done in parallel or in-house, potentially reducing overall lead time if the gear cutter has immediate capacity.
However, the quality of the final gear depends heavily on the accuracy of the customer-supplied blank—especially the bore concentricity and face squareness—so precise specifications are critical. Not all shops offer CTO services, but those that do evaluate each project individually for compatibility with their tooling and fixturing.