Used Pfauter-Maag Machines We Buy

Two Gear-Machine Names Behind One Hub

Pfauter and MAAG were separate gear-machine builders, one German and one Swiss. The joined name has a paper trail: Gleason's history of its Rockford, Illinois, cutting tool plant records that Pfauter-Maag Cutting Tools L.P. was established in 1987, when it bought the tool division of the Barber Colman Company. In our catalog the pair has become a filing label, and most of the machines filed under it carry MAAG designations.

Hermann Pfauter's firm now belongs to Gleason. On the timeline Gleason keeps for its Ludwigsburg plant, the Pfauter Group joined Gleason Corporation in 1997, and the plant trades as Gleason-Pfauter Maschinenfabrik GmbH. MAAG began in 1913, when Max Maag put his ideas for better gearing to work in a one-story workshop in Zurich; the MAAG Group that carries the name today is a group of six companies, MAAG Pump Systems among them.

Pfauter Hobbing, From Chemnitz to Ludwigsburg

Robert Hermann Pfauter patented the gear hobbing process in 1897 and founded his machine works in Chemnitz in 1900. In 1938/39 the company brought out climb hobbing, its first automated hobbing machine and the first motorized hob head. After its equipment was dismantled and the company expropriated, the family moved to the Allied Zone, and a new plant opened in Ludwigsburg, West Germany, in 1952.

From Ludwigsburg, Pfauter showed its first NC hobbing machine at EMO in Paris in 1975, delivered its first PE150 CNC hobber in 1983 and built its first profile grinding machine in 1987. Gleason says the PE150 went on to become the best-selling hobbing machine worldwide.

Pfauter on Gleason-Pfauter's Timeline

Pfauter dates from the timeline Gleason publishes for its Ludwigsburg plant, which runs to 2017:

Condensed from Gleason's own timeline for Gleason-Pfauter Maschinenfabrik GmbH, Ludwigsburg.

MAAG Shapers, Grinders and Testers

MAAG's gear machines grew out of its gear and gearbox business. The machine-tool history site lathes.co.uk says the Zurich company branched into gear-making machines, among them toothed planers, tooth grinders and gear testing and measuring machines, and stopped making them at the end of 1989 to concentrate on gearboxes. Gear Solutions magazine, in an article dated October 1, 2003, says the last MAAG gear-shaping machine was built and delivered in 1990. Either way, every MAAG gear machine on the market today is at least three decades old.

The same Gear Solutions article explains why owners keep them: MAAG shapers cut with a rack-type cutter that can be reground until it is only a few millimeters thick, the later large-capacity models such as the SH-250 and SH-450 can finish shape-hardened gears with modern cutters, and MAAG shapers traditionally held a high resale value.

Retrofits and Controls on an Old Pfauter or MAAG

With no new MAAG shapers built for decades, the controls on surviving ones vary a great deal, and that shows up in the offer. Gear Solutions reports that Walter Grell, working with Richard Welter Maschinen, began delivering refurbished MAAG gear-cutting machines fitted with a NUM 1060 CNC control, and that the package can be retrofitted to any MAAG shaper. Tell us whether yours is still mechanical or has been converted, and by whom.

On the Pfauter side the control dates the machine as well. Pfauter showed its first NC hobbing machine in 1975 and delivered its first CNC PE150 in 1983, so a Pfauter with an NC or CNC control was built after those dates.

Gleason Support, or Selling Outright

A Pfauter hobber or grinder still has a maker behind it. Gleason took in the Pfauter Group in 1997 and folded its Gleason-Hurth machine division into the Gleason-Pfauter organization in 2015, so for a Pfauter you plan to keep, start with Gleason. MAAG gear machines have not been built since about 1990, and their upkeep now falls to rebuilders such as the retrofit firms Gear Solutions describes.

When either kind of machine is leaving your floor instead, we buy it outright. Retrofit paperwork, inspection charts and the tooling set all help us place it.

MAAG Pumps and the Extrusion Listings

The MAAG name also appears on extrusion equipment. MAAG Group, whose own corporate history starts with Max Maag's Zurich gear works, today brings together Reduction Scheer, MAAG Pump Systems, Automatik, Gala, Ettlinger and Xantec, and it sells extrex gear pumps for extrusion lines. The EXTREX listings in our catalog match that pump line. Other extrusion strings in this hub, such as EX110 and SGS, are not names we found on MAAG Group's pages, so send us the plate and we will confirm the maker before we quote.

What Is Actually in the Pfauter-Maag Listings

This hub holds 162 listings and every one of them is filed under Pfauter-Maag in our catalog; the machines themselves carry MAAG or Pfauter designations. There is no second brand in here. This is a small, specialist grouping, ranked 34th of the 126 brands in our catalog, not one of our large brand pages. The category split is exact and accounts for all 162. CNC Gear Machinery holds 119 listings. CNC Miscellaneous Machines holds 19, CNC Extruders 17, CNC Extrusion Machines 3, CNC Grinding Machines 2, and Metal Cutting 2. Those are the catalog's own labels, awkward ones included, and we have not tidied them up for this page. The number that matters most to an owner is a different one: 162 listings, 162 distinct model strings. No two machines here share a designation. We are not sitting on twenty copies of your machine waiting to move, so an odd model number is not a problem on this nameplate. It is the norm.

MAAG Gear Shapers, Grinders and Testers by Family

SH is the largest single group at 39 listings, all 39 filed under CNC Gear Machinery. The catalog types them as gear shapers and the model strings run SH-75, SH-180, SH-250, SH600 and SH1200, plus a DSH 20. Three sit under a separate SH180 token, two under SH600 and two under SH250. The catalog does not record whether those overlap the 39, so we count those tokens separately and quote them separately, never as one combined SH total. On the grinding side, SD holds 14 listings, 13 under CNC Gear Machinery and one under CNC Grinding Machines, in SD-32, SD-32X and SD-36X form. HSS holds 10 gear grinders, all 10 under CNC Gear Machinery, including the HSS90S and HSS-90/100 S. SHS holds 6, including the SHS 120. SP is 5 gear testers, the SP-60 and SP-200. WS is 2 gear cutter sharpeners, the WS-2, and an HSP-80 sits under other gear machines. PH is four machines, all filed under CNC Gear Machinery.

The Extrusion Side of the Same Nameplate

This is the part of the hub that surprises people. Twenty of the 162 listings are extrusion-classified, 17 under CNC Extruders and 3 under CNC Extrusion Machines, and another 19 sit under CNC Miscellaneous Machines. The MAAG name covers two different machine populations from what are today separate businesses, and the catalog files them apart. The family data shows it directly. EX110 has 5 listings and they land in three different buckets: 2 under CNC Miscellaneous Machines, 2 under CNC Extruders and 1 under CNC Gear Machinery. EXTREX has 4, split 2 miscellaneous, 1 gear machinery and 1 extruders. SGS is 2 listings the catalog files as twin screw extruders, including an SGS 25-E4. EX36, DROPPO, NBP, DAS and LS each carry 2, with model strings like EX36 ID, Droppo 50 and LS520. If you own MAAG extrusion equipment, you may not know we buy it. We do, on the same terms as a gear machine, running or idle.

What Determines the Offer on a Used Pfauter or Maag

Jason Puuri scopes these himself, and gear equipment does not get scoped like a machining center. Start with what we ask for on any machine: brand, model, year, condition and control type. Photos help but are not required. From there he values it against current market data, brand, model, age and condition, then sends a transparent, market-based offer, typically within 24 to 48 hours. What moves an offer here is the package around the machine. Capacity, the change-gear and index-plate set, the cutter and workholding, and whether it still holds tolerance all carry weight that spindle hours alone do not. A gear tester like an SP-60 or SP-200 gets scoped as metrology, not as a cutting machine. A WS-2 cutter sharpener is tooling-adjacent and gets scoped differently again. Classification is not always obvious either: 13 of our 14 SD listings sit under gear machinery, one under general CNC grinding. The data plate settles it.

Have This Ready Before You Call

A short list gets you an answer fastest. Model and serial exactly as they are stamped on the data plate. Build year. Control type, and whether the machine was ever retrofitted. Max gear diameter and module capacity. The change-gear and index-plate set, the cutter package and the workholding. Whether it still holds tolerance, plus a few photos. The data plate matters more here than on most nameplates. With 162 distinct model strings across 162 listings, there is no house style to fall back on. Even inside one family the designations vary: our own listings carry SH-250, SH 180, SH180/300 and SH-250/300, and SD-32, SD 32 X and SD-32X all appear separately. Hyphen, space and slash variants of the same designation are common here, so read the plate to us character by character rather than from memory. Where a build year is recorded, the listings that carry one run from 1974 to 2022.

Selling to MTE Instead of Listing or Scrapping It

Most owners of this equipment assume there is no buyer. Many of these models are out of production, and on this nameplate that is ordinary rather than an exception: the catalog marks SH shapers, SD and HSS grinders and SP testers among its discontinued models. That is exactly the population we buy. Machine Tool Exchange is a direct buyer, not a broker. We purchase outright, no consignment and no listing. You get a transparent, market-based offer, typically within 24 to 48 hours, with no obligation. If you accept, we can arrange rigging, crating and freight, service covers all 50 states, and we can arrange the pickup. We buy outright and arrange the pickup. Any brand, any condition, any quantity, running, idle or decommissioned, a single machine or a full facility. We are an affiliate of Superior Machine Tools. Call 517-514-5190 or use the form at /sell-your-cnc-machine/.