Method Of Shipping A Wear Assembly

#The present invention pertains to a wear assembly for securing a wear member to excavating equipment.

#Wear parts are commonly attached to excavating equipment, such as excavating buckets or cutterheads, to protect the equipment from wear and to enhance the digging operation. The wear parts may include excavating teeth, shrouds, etc. Such wear parts typically include a base, a wear member, and a lock to releasably hold the wear member to the base.

#In regard to excavating teeth, the base includes a forwardly projecting nose for supporting the wear member. The base may be formed as an integral part of the digging edge or may be formed as one or more adapters that are fixed to the digging edge by welding or mechanical attachment. The wear member is a point which fits over the nose. The point narrows to a front digging edge for penetrating and breaking up the ground. The assembled nose and point cooperatively define an opening into which the lock is received to releasably hold the point to the nose.

#FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a wear assembly in accordance with the present invention.

#FIG. 2 is a side view of the wear assembly.

#FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view of the wear assembly vertically taken along the longitudinal axis.

#The present invention pertains to a wear assembly 10 for releasably attaching a wear member 12 to excavating equipment (not shown). In this application, wear member 12 is described in terms of a point for an excavating tooth that is attached to a lip of an excavating bucket. However, the wear member could be in the form of other kinds of wear parts (e.g., shrouds) or attached to other excavating equipment (e.g., dredge cutterheads). Moreover, relative terms such as forward, rearward, up, down, horizontal or vertical are used for convenience of explanation with reference to the orientation of the assembly in FIG. 1; other orientations are possible.

#In one embodiment (FIGS. 1-32), the wear member or point 12 is adapted to fit on a nose 14. The nose is the front portion of a base 15 that is fixed to a bucket (not shown) or other equipment. The rear mounting portion 19 of base 15 can be fixed to the bucket in a number of common ways. In the illustrated example, base 15 includes a pair of rearward legs 21 (FIGS. 1-3) that extend over and are welded to the lip of a bucket. Nevertheless, the base can include only one leg, be cast as part of the lip, or be mechanically fixed to the bucket lip, such as by a Whisler-style lock. When the base is secured to the lip by welding or a locking mechanism, the base is typically called an adapter. The base can also consist of a plurality of interconnected adapters. Wear member 12 is releasably secured to nose 14 by a lock 17.

#Nose 14 includes a body 18 and a front end 20 (FIGS. 3-11). The front end 20 preferably has a generally triangular shape with a horizontal lower surface 22 and a pair of inclined surfaces 24 facing upward and outward, collectively defining an inverted V-shape. The lower and upper surfaces 22, 24 are front stabilizing surfaces that are substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis 26 of the nose. The term “substantially parallel” is intended to include parallel surfaces as well as surfaces that diverge rearwardly from axis 26 at a small angle (e.g., of about 1-7 degrees) for manufacturing or other purposes. A small divergence may also ease removal of the wear member from the nose. In one preferred embodiment, each stabilizing surface 22, 24 diverges rearwardly at an angle of no more than about 5 degrees and most preferably about 2-3 degrees to axis 26.