US 2014/0151966 A1Published application

Dual sealing arrangement for final drive gear box

AssigneeDeere & Company

InventorsDonald O. Johannsen, Denis J. Roling

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

A final drive transmission includes concentric inner and outer metal face seals at an interface between fixed and rotating housing sections for preventing oil contaminating material from entering the housing. Each face seal includes identical metal face seal rings that are biased into sealing engagement with each by identical frusto-conical elastomeric rings. The metal rings are generally L-shaped in cross section, with the metal rings of the outer face seals being constructed to withstand extreme conditions by making their cross section approximately twice that of the inner metal rings. Together with interface surfaces, the assembled inner and outer face seals define a sealed cavity which contains lubrication oil. A reservoir of oil with an oil level sensor is coupled to the sealed cavity and in this way it is determined whether or not oil is leaking from the cavity so that steps may be taken to avoid a catastrophic failure.

Claims2

Dependent claims

In a final drive transmission including a housing defined by a fixed section and a rotatable section, a hearing arrangement supporting the rotatable section on the fixed section for rotation about a rotation axis, with the fixed and rotatable sections having adjacent fixed and rotating interface surfaces, and a sealing arrangement including inner and outer face seal assemblies mounted to the interface surfaces in concentric relationship to said rotation axis and defining an annular sealed cavity between them for containing lubrication oil, with the outer face seal assembly acting for preventing the ingress of debris from a work environment into the sealed cavity, a the improvement comprising:

said inner and outer face seals each including a pair of frusto-conical load rings respectively engaged with a pair of metal face seal rings and compressed between the housing and the pair of metal face seal rings so as to maintain the face seal rings in sealing engagement with each other;
and
said pair of metal face seal rings of said outer face seal assembly each having a cross section having an area which is approximately twice the area of the cross section of each metal face seal ring of the inner face seal assembly.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.