Betatronics®

PO Box 1288, 2286 S. Industrial, Ann Arbor, MIchigan 48106-1288
voice 734-930-6136

This web site is http://www.beta-aa.com      Our e-mail address is info@beta-a2.com

HOME page ( beta-aa.com )
AXLE ASSEMBLY page       This is AXLE PHOTOS page
GEAR RATIO MEASUREMENT page       PIN PRELOAD PLOT page
MISCELLANEOUS & UNRELATED INFO page>       MISCELLANEOUS PHOTOS page
INFORMATION on Ford Rouge Factory Tours at www.hfmgv.org/rouge/default.asp.
INFORMATION on Betatronics I232, E232, and TIMELOG at www.beta-a2.com.

CNC Communication and Industrial Gaging Equipment
Displacement - Torque - Force - Time Monitoring - Ratio - Backlash - Data Collection
Select Axle Assembly web page at the top for information on gaging. 

Note loading AXLE PHOTOS page may take 5 minutes or more at dial up speed.
If you do not know why a search engine brought you here, then see Note 1 at the end of this web page.

Photographs of Axle Components

 

If a search engine brings you directly to this page, then also you may want to look at our
AXLE ASSEMBLY page.


P1 --- Photo of a Case Bearing showing the Relation of Cone Rotation (2.25 to 1) relative to one revolution of the Cage.

P2 --- Photo of Typical Pinion Nuts -- Shown are a flanged and a non-flanged nut. Both are crimped. The plain nut requires a washer. To minimize composite runout the nut face contacting the flange or yoke must be perpendicular to the axis of the nut thread.

P3 --- Photo of a standard yoke. The Composite Runout Point is the Center of the Universal and on the Standard Yoke the location is shown and is obvious.

P4 --- Photo of a Jeep Flange. There has to be tooling to put the runout donut spherical center where the universal center would locate relative to the flange.

P5 --- Photo of a Ford Flange. To minimize runout for all types of flanges and yokes the mounting face and pilot diameter must be perpendicular and concentric with the actual centerline of the spline. Further the pinion spline axis must be concentric with the axis of rotation of the pinion.

P6 --- Photo of the other side of Ford Flange. For all types of flanges and yokes to minimize runout the face contacting the outer bearing and the flanged nut or washer seat surface must be perpendicular to the spline centerline.

P7 --- Photo of a pinion, pinion shim, inner bearing, collapsible spacer, and outer bearing. The spline is formed before hardening. After hardening the bearing journals are ground relative to the two pinion center holes. After bearings are installed the concentricity relative to the two center holes is very good, but the centerline of the spline may not be concentric or parallel to the axis of rotation of the pinion.

P8 --- Photo of a portion of the gaging area of a pinion shim machine. This type of pinion shim gage can provide repeat cycle repeatability of 0.000,2".

P9 --- Photo of one type of case shim station. Shows only the case installed. Very good repeatability. Cast iron carriers should be stress relieved before gaging. This gage applies very minimal forces on the case and carrier.

P10 --- Photo of a bearing gage used with the previous case shim gage. This type of case shim gages the bearings separate from the case-carrier gage. Repeatability of this bearing gage is close to 0.000,1". The bearing is unconstrained and gaged at a force to provided quick seating of the rollers.

P11 --- Photo of a Differential Case Assembly with Ring Gear and Side Gears, but without Case Bearing Cones and Case Shims. This axle would normally have the shims between the cones and the case, hard to change. This is a standard unit meaning it is not a limited slip or locker.

P12 --- Photo of a Cast Iron Carrier with pinion installed without seal..

P13 --- Photo of an unassembled Aluminum Rear Axle Carrier.

P14 --- Photo of an Aluminum Carrier without Gear Side Cap Showing the point on Seat Surface where gage contacts to measure carrier stretch for spreader setup for installation of case. Note so long as you stay within the elastic limit of the material you are stretching you may hold this stretch as long as desired, years if you want, without yielding the material.

P15 --- Photo of an Aluminum Carrier, Cover Plate Side. One way to measure case preload is to know the change in displacement between the manufacturing holes for a given force change on the centerline of the case, spring rate. Before you install the case measure the distance between the inner sides of said holes, then install the case, tighten cap bolts, run in case bearings until seated, then determine the change in distance between holes. Now from the known spring rate of the carrier you can determine the actual case preload. This method has no validity from before case insertion to after tubes are pressed in because the shape of the carrier changes changing the zero reference, and the spring rate also changes.

P16 --- Photo of an Aluminum Carrier showing Pinion Side manufacturing hole and bearing cap identification and orientation marking. The manufacturing holes are used for locating during machining and some assembly operations, for stretching carrier for case insertion, and can be used to measure stretch for case perload determination.

P17 --- Photo of an an Aluminum Carrier the Gear Side manufacturing hole.

P18 --- Photo of a sample distribution curve for TIR runout. Measured at the "composite runout" point. Many axles are specified at 0.010 max runout, others at 0.007 or 0.008, some at 0.005 or lower. This curve would be applicable to units with 0.010 limit, not for 0.005 limit parts because the yield would be only about 60%. Many of the high units are probably due to bad flanged nuts.

It is a real problem to get flanged nuts with good perpendicularity of the flange face to the nut thread centerline. Also nuts are generally crimped.

In one instance, when I was present, production suddenly went to about a 75% reject rate on runout. A couple of boxes of nuts were tried, but no change. I checked the gage and also did some hand checks of runout which confirmed the gage was working correctly. I suspected the nuts. At this time we could not find any boxes of nuts from a grossly different production batch. Thus, I decided to try to hand sort nuts. This was done by starting the nut on a pinion stem and judging if it wobbled too much. This brought the reject level down to about 40% which was much better. When other nuts were found the problem went away.

Note 1:  If a search engine brings you to this site and you do not know why, then save this page to a file on your computer (under FILE you would use SaveAs) and after saving, then open the file with a word processor and search for the words individually that you used in your search.  For example if the words --- drag torque --- bring up this site and this page of this site, then you would first search for drag or torque and look around those locations.  Pick If_search to return to beginning.

.  

Copyright ©  2003, 2004, 2005     Gordon A. Roberts   All rights reserved.   050128-1106