Coimbatore-based manufacturer of Power Take Off Gearboxes, Transfer cases and Auxiliary Gearboxes for on-road and off-road vehicles, Alpha Drives showcased its vertical split shaft – driveline PTO, G550 Gear Box and a PTO for small commercial vehicles (SCVs).
Suresh Williams, MD, Alpha Drives, revealed: “Our vertical split shaft is independent of any platform and can be used with any OEM, be it BharatBenz, Ashok Leyland or Tata Motors. It is designed to go with many applications like fire trucks as well as concrete boom pumps. It comes with higher power rating which is not available with others in the market. We are also offering different ratios for speed reduction and increase. We also proposed to fit it with cooler of high-power ratings. The G550 gear box is suited for Tata Trucks where a pump is integrated with a PTO and it fits within a package; packaging used to be a problem when it had an output shaft and the pump had to be mounted remotely. We have also developed a PTO for Ashok Leyland Dost apart from the regular PTOs we have for 25 ton and 49 ton tippers.”
While the company continues to focus on heavy-duty tippers, it is also stepping up its focus on lower tonnage vehicles. “Our strength has been in heavy-duty trucks but now we are also going to cater to SCVs and LCVs. Our product strength is the quality created by our dedicated team of designers who use modern design software backed by validation and testing at our facility in Coimbatore. This has enabled us to acquire several patents and registered designs as we constantly keep innovating. For instance, 50 per cent of our products have moved from cast iron to aluminum,” expressed Williams.
Alpha Drives works with OEMs only in technicalities of the PTO requirement and supplies largely to tier-I companies like Hyva and Wipro who are total solution providers to the OEMs. However, its innovative products should help the company work with OEMs both with respect to meeting cost and packaging requirements. “We currently produce 25,000 PTOs per annum in single shift and can ramp up quite rapidly. Our experience for the past two decades also helps us in exports and gain good traction in supplying PTOs for defence requirements,” he said.