One of the ways we’ve helped our agricultural customers is replacing older straight bore shaft mounted gearboxes with ABB Dodge Torque-Arm II reducers by utilizing their Short Shaft Twin Tapered Bushing Kit.
A long time ago, the only type of shaft mount gearboxes available were straight bore units and they didn’t require much shaft. In recent years, most manufacturers stopped making the straight bore units due to improved tapered bushing systems.
The problem is that if an existing straight bore unit goes bad, you can’t just swap it out because there isn’t enough shaft on the old unit to accommodate the newer tapered designs available from most manufacturers.
The Short Shaft Twin Tapered Bushing system is a far superior locking system compared to the older straight bore designs (which just used a keyway and setscrews), but the feature that makes it such a great problem solver for changing out old straight bore units is the amount of shaft required for installation.
These units are commonly located on top of grain bucket elevators, so they’re not easy to access or change. Before the short shaft bushing option, customers would need to replace the shaft which meant having to remove the head pulley, remove bearings (which usually get destroyed in the process), and unsplice and resplice the belt. Typically, this would all need to be done with a crane, so it’s a time-consuming and expensive process.
Binkelman has been able to offer the short shaft bushing kit, which only requires the customer to replace the gearbox – saving them time and money while upgrading their equipment.