Excessive roller path wear in track shoes is the main contributor to pulling an undercarriage out of service. Much of the roller path wear comes from the shoes dragging across the top of the guide rails. One way to combat the wear of steel running on steel is to grease the mating surfaces. Therefore, L&H has developed a greased track slide as well as a method for delivering grease to the slides.
The new greased track slides will be installed on one of the crawler frame of a 7495HF shovel and the other one will have conventional non greased track slides. Having the frames installed on the same machine will allow L&H engineers to compare roller path as well as track slide wear rates. L&H Engineering Manager, Bill Schroyer, explained ” We hope to see a decrease in wear of the crawler shoe roller paths, which in turn would increase the life of the crawler shoes, the most expensive part of the undercarriage.”
Illustration of the L&H greased track slide system
