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Our History

GAM Enterprises began in 1990 when Gary Michalek saw an opportunity to start a long-term relationship with Jakob Antriebstechnik, a German based company who introduced the first servo bellows coupling into the automation market. We began as a distributor but soon realized to be successful, we needed to add manufacturing. GAM soon became known as the company to call when you needed great service and a custom bored coupling shipped same day.

In 1998, GAM Gear was formed with Craig Van den Avont, who left Rexroth Indramat as Chief Engineer to start our high precision gearbox company to complement GAM’s servo coupling product line. The two companies merged in 2013. The overall company has grown under his leadership both in top line revenue and in capabilities. GAM has a compounded annual growth rate of double digits for over 20 years.

GAM has evolved to become a full manufacutirng company, where many of our products are designed and manufactured in our USA manufacturing plant, located in Mount Prospect, Illinois. GAM is proud of the fact that we are bringing manufacturing back to the United States. Today 90% of the gearboxes GAM ships are produced in the USA.

Today GAM is known for its breadth of products, flexible manufacturing, and the ability to collaborate with customers to provide unique solutions to customer applications. 

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Our Evolution

Throughout our history, GAM has been constantly evolving - from our beginning as a distributor to full design, development, and manufacturing of our own products.

Today 90% of the gearboxes GAM ships are produced in the USA, proving US manufacturing can succeed!

Our Beginning

  • 1990 GAM Enterprises is founded by Gary Michalek, bringing the bellows coupling to the North American Market, eventually establishing 80% market share
  • 1998 GAM Gear, LLC is created by Gary Michalek and Craig Van den Avont to go to market as a gearbox company, under the GAM brand, with a complete competitive product range, established through several key private label agreements

We Add Light Manufacturing

  • 1999  Establish light manufacturing to manufacture gearbox components and final assembly
  • 2004  Launch our first in-house developed product, the LSK Linear Slide Kit
  • 2009  Develop a low-cost hypoid gearbox, the Dyna-Lite
  • 2013  GAM Gear and GAM Enterprises companies merge

We Establish Full Design, Development, and Manufacturing

  • 2015  Implement full gearbox manufacturing in-house with US sources
  • 2018  Acquire the rights to the highest performance planetary from our supplier and move manufacturing to GAM in the USA
  • 2018  Begin a multi-year project to launch 5 new product lines targeted at the Robotics Market through in-house development and global partnerships
  • 2019 Over 85% of the products shipped are GAM developed and manufactured

We Expand for Future Success

  • 2021 Move into new facilities 3x larger
  • 2022 Begin gear manufacturing

Contact the GAM Team

Have questions? Our team of experts can help! Give us a call at 888-426-7117 or fill out the form below and one of our team members will be in touch shortly.
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