Look after your teeth, as an investment.

A 6-month visit to the dentist is a must. If you don’t, your teeth can go bad, crack, or develop holes, causing you a lot of pain. You should treat your teeth like an investment in your future ongoing health. The same goes for Undercarriage Sprocket teeth, they are an investment, and if you look after them, they will provide a good ROI. If they wear badly, they can cause a lot of damage to the bushes and the result is the loss of the bushes and the links where the bushes are destroyed, but there is still a lot of life/wear material left in the links! Poor ROI.

Undercarriage Inspectors are provided with guidance in the TrackTreads mobile application as to what needs to be scrutinized for each component being inspected. In the case of sprocket segments, there are 2 main considerations among others:

1. Thinning of teeth due to wear

Tooth wear depends on several factors (ground conditions, packing, amount of reversing and others), and as the teeth wear, they become thinner. The failure point is reached when the teeth edges crack and break off. At the sign of any tooth damage, the machine should be stopped immediately, and the segments replaced. Continuing to operate will inflict serious damage on the bushes, by accelerating the wear and cracking the bushes with the resultant loss in oil and then dry joints.

Where the sprocket is damaged or seriously worn, check for damage to multiple bushes on the chain.

Undercarriage Experts will recommend replacement of the segments in certain cases to preserve the value in the links and bushes. This will achieve a better ROI on the Chains at the expense of replacement segments.

2. Tooth Root or tooth valley wear.

Segment wear leads to deeper tooth roots or valleys which effectively changes the chain pitch causing excess wear on the pins and bushes. This results in pitch mismatch and accelerated wear on the bushings. I will try and cover this in more detail in another article.

The Goal of TrackTreads Undercarriage Management is to enable users to manage their tracked machines through the use of a combination of tools: –  

1. Inspection tools to measure components,
2. Software system to collect the inspection results and automatically calculate the % worn.
3. Videos and pointers on how to measure the components with each measurement tool.
4.  Guides on what component faults to look for on each type of UC component.