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A gearhead is a standalone gear reduction unit with no motor attached. You mount it to whatever motor you've already selected, rather than buying a matched motor-gearbox pair. In heavier industrial contexts, the same product is often called a speed reducer — the terms describe the same function: taking a motor's input speed and torque and converting it to the output speed and torque your application needs. This differs from a gearmotor, where the motor and gearing are pre-assembled by the manufacturer as one unit (see our Gearmotors category).
Electromate carries five gearhead and speed reducer lines, each built around a different gear geometry and application range.
Pancake Gearing Components
Pancake gearing components are Harmonic Drive strain wave gear sets built for minimum thickness. The CSD series reduces thickness to about a quarter of the standard CSF series. The FB and FR series pursue flatness further, each built from four parts — Wave Generator, Flexspline, Dynamic Spline, and Circular Spline — using the same operating principle as Harmonic Drive's cup-type gearing. A separate FD differential series allows fine phase and timing adjustment during operation. All are zero-backlash by design and deliver high reduction ratios in an extremely compact, low-profile form factor.
Best for: space-constrained designs where axial length is the limiting dimension and zero backlash is required.
Planetary gearheads use a sun gear at the center, planet gears rotating around it, and an outer ring gear with internal teeth. Load is distributed across multiple gears, giving high torque transmission and speed reduction in a compact footprint. Standard gear ratios run from 3:1 to 100:1, with efficiency up to 97% and input speeds handled up to and beyond 10,000 RPM. Torque capacity spans from a few Nm to several thousand Nm depending on frame size and stage count. Electromate's planetary gearhead lines include GAM's EPL, PE, and SPH series, Thomson's TRUE Micron series, and Harmonic Drive's HPN.
Best for: robotics, CNC machinery, packaging equipment, and other applications needing high torque and low backlash in a small envelope.
Right-angle planetary gearheads route output 90° from the input shaft, using a spiral bevel or helical-planetary stage for the turn. Electromate offers one of the largest selections of right-angle planetary gear reducers available, spanning 60 mm to 220 mm frame sizes (including most NEMA sizes), with backlash from 1 to 20 arc-minutes, torque from 25 Nm to 2,800 Nm, and ratios from 1.1:1 to 500:1. Shimpo's EVB series, the right-angle version of the VRB line, adds a through-bolt flange output for easier mounting, ratios from 3:1 to 100:1, backlash as low as 4 arc-minutes, and loads to roughly 600 Nm.
Best for: applications where the motor can't sit in-line with the driven shaft, such as conveyor drives, indexing tables, and compact machine layouts.
Spiral bevel gearboxes use curved, oblique-tooth gears to transfer torque between shafts at a right angle, typically 90°. The curved tooth profile engages progressively rather than abruptly, which cuts noise and vibration versus straight bevel gearing and suits higher-speed, higher-performance applications. Electromate's GAM spiral bevel line covers backlash ratings from 6 to 20 arc-minutes and torque up to 5,400 Nm. The L Series covers compact 35 mm and 45 mm aluminum-housing frames; the V Series scales up to larger frame sizes for higher-torque right-angle drives.
Best for: right-angle power transmission where speed, noise, and smoothness matter more than the lowest possible backlash.
Cycloidal speed reducers use eccentric (planocentric) motion instead of meshing spur teeth to achieve reduction — the internal gear itself moves in an eccentric path rather than flexing, which is what separates cycloidal gearing from strain wave (harmonic) gearing. Electromate's GAM RoboCycloidal series delivers zero-backlash performance with high shock-load absorption and repeatability over long duty cycles. Each unit integrates the cycloidal reducer with a servo motor adapter for a compact, high-torque, ready-to-mount package.
Best for: robotic joints, rotary positioners, and indexing systems that need to absorb shock loads while holding position accurately over millions of cycles.
The table below compares gear geometry, backlash, torque range, and best-fit use case across all five lines. If you need a motor and gearbox pre-matched as one part number, see our Gearmotors category instead.
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