Universal equipment for wheel-pair disassembly

Abstract

1285 At present, presses produced by the Odessa Press mash plant are mainly used for the disassembly of wheel pairs. These presses require strong foundations and take up considerable space. In disassembly, the wheel pair is suspended from a support in the wheel hub. In practice, the disassembly force for seamlessly rolled wheels is 6000 kN or more, in contrast to the assembly forces, which are no more than 80–100 kN. This indicates considerable additional forces due to skewing, jamming, and other consequences of visual basing of the wheel. This results in skewing, scratch ing, and fracture of the wheel pair’s axle. At OAO ENIMS in 2005, the URK1 unit was man ufactured for the disassembly of freight car wheel pairs at Troitsk Refrigerator Depot [1]. It includes a system with a floating foundation plate, so that the wheel pair may be based at the surface of the axle, without suspension. This equipment has significant benefits over the Pressmash presses: smaller size, lower drive power, and lower cost. Production measurements (more than 1000) show that the disassembly forces in the URK1 unit are considerable less than in the Pressmash presses (Fig. 1), thanks to the increased basing precision and the reduced dependence on operator skill. The large scale introduction of disk brakes on the wheel pairs of high speed trains has increased the requirements on the disassembly systems. As an exam ple, consider a wheel pair of GP200 type (Fig. 2). As is evident from Fig. 2, the space for the founda tion plate on the inside of the wheel hub is very limited (on account of the braking disk or gear). This entails the search for new designs. The table presents the dimensions of the wheel pair: D, the diameter of the brake disk; h1, the distance between the wheel hubs and the braking disk; h2, the width of the braking disk; and l, the distance between the braking disks. The URK1 unit provides the starting point for the development of the URKT1 unit (Fig. 3) [2]. The URKT1 unit includes the power system of a hydraulic press: two plates 2 and 4 connected by four pins 3. The pins are attached by external nuts. The main power cylinder 5 is mounted at rear plate 4. In front plate 2, there is a cutout for the introduction of the wheel pair, as well as two holes (in the plane of the axle) for the attachment of secondary cylinders 1. This fundamentally new configuration permits a hybrid approach to disassembly. All the hydraulic cyl inders act at once, in opposing directions. The rod of Universal Equipment for Wheel Pair Disassembly