Spur may be cut or ground on a milling machine or jig grinder utilizing a numbered gear cutter, and any indexing head or rotary table. The number of the gear cutter is determined by the tooth count of the gear to be cut. There are a few different types of cutters used when creating gears. One is a rack shaper. These are straight and move in a direction tangent to the gear, while the gear. They have six to twelve teeth and eventually have to be moved back to the starting point to begin another cut.