Worm designs and manufacturing methods have changed very little over the past half century. Finishing a worm in soft material then hardening offers huge savings to worm manufacturers, but has not been considered viable because of distortions in the material from heat treating. Thread grinding has long been used as a finishing operation to removing a mere 0.01-0.02” to achieve the necessary worm tolerances for Lead, Pitch Diameter, Run-out, etc. Grinding, which comes at a big cost is no longer required. Today however, there is progress. To compete with imports mostly from Asia, U.S. manufacturers are reevaluating their products. Gear worms can be produced much better and more economically using non traditional methods. Focusing in on speed reducers, specifically right-angle worm reducers, many well know suppliers have raised the bar of performance and pricing. They have done so through whirling, induction heating, and new design approaches. Whirling The little known process of whirling is showing impressive returns in producing worms for gear worm reducers. Methods such as hobbing or thread milling are actively being replaced by this relatively new cutting process. Improvements in many areas of manufacturing, including cutting tool materials and geometry, the machine tools themselves and induction hardening procedures, have all allowed manufacturers to reduce the number of process steps by 60% or more. By machining the worm to finished tolerances and surface roughness using the whirling process then induction hardening, the worms are not only produced faster, less expensively, and with fewer handlings but to greater tolerances than ever before. This method completely eliminates the need for thread grinding. Cylindrical grinding of the bearing journals can also be eliminated by turning the soft blanks to finished tolerances and surface roughness prior to whirling the worm section. The journals can remain soft and thus do not require subsequent finishing operations. The induction heating process of hardening then quenching only the worm section does not distort or add stress to the material. The worm shaft does not require straightening which eliminates yet another, normally manual operation.