A brand new gearbox is a fascinating piece of technology: the heavy cast iron represents power and stability. The ball bearing in it, on the other hand, moves easily, almost playfully.

In order to produce premium-quality angular gearboxes like ATEK and, for example, to perfectly adjust the backlash to customer requirements, even a skilled worker needs many years of experience. It depends on this precision whether the drive, even under difficult conditions such as high temperatures or the action of enormous forces, will carry out the precise rotary motion and positioning required of it – and that almost wear-free for many years.

At ATEK in Rellingen, about thirty employees produce such masterpieces by hand. The production process, however, is optimised as much as possible – from warehouse management through production to shipping – even demanding designs can often be delivered within hours. These fast delivery times are ATEK's unique selling point.

ATEK keeps almost half a million individual parts in stock for this purpose. The thorough modularisation of the transmission components allows products to be manufactured efficiently and in a wide range of applications according to the modular principle. In addition to the product business, ATEK also offers design services and gear maintenance.

The history of ATEK began in 1939: Willi Glapiak founded a contract turning shop in Hamburg. His daughter Margrit kept the account ledger by hand. After the death of her father, she and the man who later became her husband, the master craftsman Hans-Jochen Sahling, ran the company for many years.

In 1983, it became somewhat complicated: Willi Glapiak's company, which in the meantime had been transformed into a GmbH (limited liability company) and was managed by Margrit Glapiak-Sahling and her husband Hans-Jochen Sahling, and ATEK Ingenieurbüro für Antriebstechnik, managed by Siegfried Knorr, merged to form ATEK Antriebstechnik Willi Glapiak GmbH. As partners, the Knorr and Sahling families each owned half of the new company. Hans-Jochen Sahling and Siegfried Knorr took over the management of the company.

At this time, the turning shop also carried out the first simple assembly work for customers such as the coffee roaster Tchibo. These orders brought the employees into contact for the first time with angle gears – the product with which the company is now successful worldwide.

In the mid-1980s, ATEK launched its first angle gear units, which quickly found takers all over the world. In 2002, the owner families settled the succession of the company: Siegfried Knorr and Hans-Jochen Sahling withdrew from the operative business and appointed Christoph Loch as the new managing director. In 2006, Axel Brügmann, the sales manager and authorised signatory for many years, was appointed as the second managing director.
ATEK continued to pursue a course of growth. At the end of 2012, Brügmann and Loch acquired the shares of ATEK Antriebstechnik Willi Glapiak GmbH as shareholders of the B&L Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, which had been founded in the meantime. At the same time, the rapidly growing transmission specialist outgrew its site in Prisdorf. ATEK moved to Rellingen at the beginning of 2013.

On April 30, 2019, Loch and Brügmann sold ATEK to the Obermark Group and resigned from their directorships. Sebastian Sturm, who had been with the company since 2011, most recently in the role of General Sales Manager, became the new Managing Director.