Racks are portions of a cylindrical disk with an infinite radius which includes involute shaped tooth cut into its encounter. Racks mate exclusively with spur gears which have the same module, pressure position and preferably encounter width. KHK offers equipment racks in many materials, configurations, modules and lengths. One unique feature of our racks is usually that most are supplied with finished ends. This type of production allows for multiple racks to end up being butted, 
end-to-end, to produce one Metric Gear Rack continuous amount of rack. Many of the products that people offer allow for secondary operations such as reduction of the length, the adding of tapped holes, or the use of heat treatment. Our offering also contains products which have already had some of these secondary operations completed.
The straight tooth cylindrical gear for which the radius of the pitch cylinder is infinite and in a bar form is named a gear rack. If it is sorted by the positions of the gear shafts, it belongs to the parallel shaft category. The spur equipment that meshes with a gear rack is normally called a pinion.
Besides gear racks with straight range teeth, there are helical racks which have slanted teeth. Helical gear racks are paired with helical gears, but due to the slant of the tooth path, as in helical gears, the mesh creates axial thrust forces.
Among the gear racks’ primary applications are machine tools and transport devices so when the applications involve transmitting linear motions, they are often compared with ball screws. In those cases, the main benefits of gear racks could be named such as being able to fulfill a heavier load by using larger modules and having no size limitation by connecting equipment racks with completed ends. On the other hand, an example of the disadvantages of equipment racks contains the occurrence of backlash.
When manufacturing gear racks, due to their bar shape, bending often outcomes. In such cases, corrective procedures using presses are often employed.