Racks are portions of a cylindrical disk with an infinite radius which includes involute shaped tooth cut into its face. Racks mate solely with spur gears which have the same module, pressure position and preferably face width. KHK offers gear racks in many components, configurations, modules and lengths. One exclusive feature of our racks is usually that most are given finished ends. This type of production permits multiple racks to be butted, end-to-end, to create one continuous amount of rack. Most of the products that we offer enable secondary procedures such as for example reduction of the space, the adding of tapped holes, or the application of heat treatment. Our offering also includes products which have already had some of these secondary operations completed.
The straight tooth cylindrical gear that the radius of the pitch cylinder is infinite and in a bar form is called a gear rack. If it is sorted by the positions of the apparatus shafts, it belongs to the parallel shaft category. The spur gear that meshes with a gear rack is normally called a pinion.

Besides equipment racks with straight line the teeth, there are helical racks that have slanted teeth. Helical gear racks are paired with helical gears, but Metric Gear Rack because of the slant of the tooth path, as in helical gears, the mesh generates axial thrust forces.

Among the gear racks' primary applications are machine equipment and transport devices and when the applications involve transmitting linear motions, they are generally compared with ball screws. In those cases, the main advantages of gear racks could be named such as having the ability to fulfill a heavier load by using bigger modules and having no size limitation by connecting gear racks with completed ends. On the other hand, a good example of the disadvantages of equipment racks includes the occurrence of backlash.

When manufacturing gear racks, because of their bar shape, bending often outcomes. In these cases, corrective processes using presses tend to be employed.