Tire chain attachment tool for a wheel loader
Corporate Data(In brief)
- Name
- Maeda Seisakusho Co.,Ltd.
- Business lines
- Manufacturing, sales & rental of construction machines,industrial machines, and various plant facilities and environmental systems.
- Capital
- 3,160 million yen
- No. of employees
- 616
- Head Office
- 1095 Onbegawa Shinonoi, Nagano-shi, Nagano Pref.
- Established
- in 1962
- Miscellaneous
- http://www.maesei.co.jp/
Problems found before improvements
Tire chains attached onto the tires to work on snow for a wheel loader consist of side chains and cross chains.
Manual installment of the tire chains onto the tire of a wheel loader is often an extremely heavy process. A major difficulty with attaching tire chains is trying to lift manually a part of chains onto a tire. This may cause low back pain because the weight of chains on the tire of a wheel loader with curb weight of 8 tons is as heavy as 50 kilograms. Weight of chains varies depending on the size of the wheel loader.
Installing the chains on a tire requires an operator to align side chains while another operator drives the wheel loader forward or backward with utmost care so that the chains properly wrap around the tire. This is very hazardous process because the operator aligning the chains works in the vicinity of the moving tire.
The tire chain mounting tool has been developed that ensures much safer and more efficient attachment of the chains onto the tire (See Fig. 1).
Improvements
The newly designed tire chain attachment tool for a wheel loader (Fig. 2)
consists of:
- 1) a setting wire which hangs on the tread of the tire to guide the side chains to wrap around the tire properly while the tire rotates -- the wire helps prevent the chains from coming out of the tire;
- 2) a fixing bracket which helps prevent the chains from becoming misaligned during wrapping around the tire; and
- 3) a pair of hooks to which the chains are connected.
The procedures for installing the chains to a tire using the tool are:
- 1) Hang the setting wire on the tread of the tire so that the hooks are located low on the tire (See Fig. 3).
- 2) Hook right and left side chains to the hook (See Fig. 4).
- 3) Turn the tire backward to let the chains wrap around the tire in case of attaching chains to the front tire; turn forward in case of the rear tire. Turn the tire by 360 degrees and stop the turn when the tool comes to such a position that the operator can safely detach it from the tire. Detach the tool and connect the ends of the side chains (See Fig. 5 and 6).
Beneficial effects
The tire chain attachment tool for a wheel loader can greatly reduce the manual handling of the heavy tire chains and the consequent severe physical strain.
The device obviates the need for manual alignment of the chains, thus improves security of the operator. It also has an advantage of increased speed for attaching the chains.
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