W
hen a compli- cated casting for a major company is designed, it’s not a
one-person job. Multiple teams, crews and departments are involved. Each has specific roles they need to fill with their respective areas of expertise, which helps even more when chal- lenges and hiccups arise. What happened when John Deere
Waterloo Works built the drive hous- ing casting for the 9RX 4-Track shows the importance of that teamwork. Te engineering and casting sides
of the company communicated fre- quently, exchanged ideas and worked together to create a component that helped John Deere jump into a new market segment—four-track tractors.
“In order for this to be a suc- cess it took a lot of collaboration between a lot of different groups within Deere,” said staff engineer Jeff Lubben. “Machining people, our foundry, our analysis group, design. In order to make this a success on the assembly line and for our customers it took a lot of work from a lot of different folks.” Te drive housing carries the gear
train and supports the whole trac- tor and undercarriage for the track system. It also limits the articulation of the undercarriage and transfers the torque from the axle to the shaft, enclosing all the gear train. Engineers at Deere deter- mined a single large casting would achieve better gear alignment. The
tractor has large spur gears, one of which is over 27 in. in diameter, and the gears were aligned so that the critical bearing bores and shaft features were machined in one operation.
Te designers also wanted to
incorporate a self-contained lubri- cation system for the axle within the housing to avoid any external routing oil lines. Te oil was designed to route through the housing via a patented system. Each tractor has four of these
castings—one in the left front, right rear, right front and left rear. Casting it, opposed to other pro-
cesses, was an obvious fit. “Obviously, you could make a stamped and welded part look nice
June 2016 MODERN CASTING | 25
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