Roger Baker, Komatsu Australia`s sales and business development manager for undercarriage, gives some tips on managing undercarriage wear -- and how to significantly extend undercarriage life using a tried-and-tested technique.
You can`t prevent undercarriage wear; that`s something that owners of crawler equipment have to accept.
The key to reducing your undercarriage costs is all about how you manage wear.
The first thing to do is to look at conditions where your equipment is operating; they are a major contributor to wear.
Harsh conditions, such as abrasive or sandy materials in a wet site, will very quickly wear an undercarriage. Often this may have to be a trade off; most operators accept that undercarriage wear rates will be very high, and price the job or project accordingly.
However, even in the worst conditions (and wet sand is right up there), keeping a close eye on undercarriage wear, and taking action at the right moment can gain you substantially longer life.
In the past, it was accepted in an abrasive environment that you would simply run the tracks to destruction, then replace the links.
But now the preferred option is to carry out regular inspections and do a pin-and-bush turn (turning the pins and bushes through 180 degrees) when wear gets to a certain level. This effectively gives you another life from your undercarriage.
A pin-and-bush turn involved removing the track from your machine, putting it on a track press and carrying out the turns.
This has been a recognised process on dozers for many years, but hasn`t traditionally been a standard practice for excavators.
However, we are now finding a lot more interest in better managing undercarriage wear on excavators.
Combining regular undercarriage inspections (and remember the wear on pins and bushes is measured in millimetres, so it`s not just a case of a visual inspection -- you have to have the right tools), with a pin-and-bush turn can get you another 60% additional life from your track.
For example, if you do a pin-and-bush turn at 5000 hours, you stand a good chance of getting another 3000 to 4000 hours from your track. If you didn`t do the turn, you may only get a total of 6000-7000 hours.
Of you are operating in particularly harsh or abrasive conditions, for example in wet sand, you may wish to opt for abrasion-resistant or heavy-duty links. These will give you a longer life for given conditions.
You also need to balance the higher up-front costs of these beefed up components against the longer life and reduced downtime (when you need to change tracks) you`ll experience.
Pin-and-bush turns on an excavator or dozer will give you a longer life, but you need to weigh up the cost of removing the track and taking it to a track press. If you are lucky, this will be a labour-only job, without the need for additional or replacement parts.
Successful pin-and-bush turns on SALT
Many owners of dozers may not be aware that recent advances in the technology behind sealed and lubricated track (SALT) mean that such components are now far more likely to allow successful pin-and-bush turns.
Traditionally with SALT components on undercarriage, it was not always possible to guarantee that a pin-and-bush turn would be a "wet turn", so that the SALT held its oil.
However, improvements in SALT design and optimised component tolerances mean pin-and-bush turns can be carried out with a high degree of confidence that it will be a successful wet turn.
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For example, better seal design, tighter tolerances, and developments such as the patented wedge ring design on large Komatsu (D275A and up) dozers maintains the joint stability, while at the same time allowing much easier disassembly and re-assembly.
These new design parameters mean SALT pin and bush turns today are far more likely to be successful -- something that isn`t always appreciated by owners of dozers, who may have had negative experiences in the past.
The message today is that you are far more likely to have a successful pin and bush turn, reduce your operating costs, and get another life from your undercarriage links, with no detriment to performance, because you are not going to lose oil.
Following are a few more tips for increasing undercarriage life.
Regular inspections
Get in the habit of carrying out regular machine inspections -- including the track. You are looking for things like oil leaks or unusual wear on the sprockets.
Komatsu Australia`s new eCare service allows us to measure undercarriage wear, giving us a tool to measure minute amounts of track wear more efficiently, so we can advise on the best course of action to maximise undercarriage life.
We recommend regular inspections on excavator undercarriage every 3000 hours and on dozer undercarriage every 1500 hours -- unless you are working in particularly harsh or abrasive conditions, when you should do this more often.
Here`s another tip. Often we find that if things are going to go wrong, they will often do so early in a particular application. So we recommend doing an inspection within the first 500 hours of going to a new job.
All Komatsu Australia`s eCare inspections are free of charge -- whether or not you are a Komatsu customer. Simply call your nearest Komatsu Australia branch and book a visit from one of our customer service sales representatives.
Operating techniques
Good operating techniques are a key to extending undercarriage life, so have a talk to your operators about how you can work together to reduce track wear.
One of the best ways to reduce track wear is to minimise operating in reverse; this increases wear because of the higher tension it puts on the track.
Also talk to your operators about not always turning to the same direction (left handed operators prefer turns to the left, right-handed operators to the right), because turning in the one direction all (or most of) the time concentrates wear on one side of the track and its components.
Varying the direction of turns spreads the wear, allowing you to get a full life from evenly worn components.
For more free advice on undercarriage management, and extending undercarriage life, or to book a free eCare inspection, please call Komatsu Australia, on ph 1800 KOMATSU (1800 566 287), and ask to speak to a customer service sales representative.