Vehicle steering device
AssigneesNsk Ltd., NSK Steering Systems Co., Ltd.
InventorHiroshi Sekine
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A vehicular steering apparatus, includes an input shaft for transmitting rotation from a steering wheel, an intermediate shaft including an upper intermediate shaft, a lower intermediate shaft and a buffer coupling for coupling the upper intermediate shaft and the lower intermediate shaft, an output shaft for driving a steering mechanism on a side of a vehicle, and universal joints for respectively coupling the input shaft and the upper intermediate shaft as well as the lower intermediate shaft and the output shaft, in which at least one of the universal joints is a universal ball joint.
Claims11
A vehicular steering apparatus, comprising a joint apparatus including:
- an input shaft for transmitting rotation from a steering wheel;
- an intermediate shaft including an upper intermediate shaft, a lower intermediate shaft and a buffer coupling for coupling the upper intermediate shaft and the lower intermediate shaft;
- an output shaft for driving a steering mechanism on a side of a vehicle;
- and
- universal joints for respectively coupling the input shaft and the upper intermediate shaft as well as the lower intermediate shaft and the output shaft,
- characterized in that at least one of the universal joints is a constant velocity ball universal joint.
A vehicular steering apparatus comprising:
- a male joint member including a first connecting base portion in a cylindrical shape and an outer spherical face joint portion provided on an axis line of the first connecting base portion and having a spherical outer face;
- a female joint member including a second connecting base portion in a cylindrical shape and an inner spherical face joint portion provided on an axis line of the second connecting base portion and having a spherical space to which the spherical outer face is fitted;
- an outer ball guide groove formed at the spherical outer face of the outer spherical face joint portion;
- an inner ball guide groove formed at an inner face of the spherical space of the inner spherical face joint portion;
- a torque transmitting ball guided by the outer ball guide groove and the inner ball guide groove;
- and
- a ball retainer for retaining the torque transmitting ball,
- characterized in that each of the first connecting base portion and the second connecting base portion includes at least one slit reaching an inner portion of a cylinder of each thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.