Other Publications

Construction Industry Poll

In the Magazine

Cover Story: 2008 Innovations

January 01, 2008 |

John Deere
NeverGrease
It means just what it says – never grease a wheel loader pin joint again.

There’s no way around it: keeping wheel loader pin joints properly greased is a pain. First, you have to manage whether or not it gets done – and on a daily basis. Then you’re never sure if each pin is getting enough grease, or that the grease is going to the right areas within the pin joint. Sure, there are auto-lube systems, but they have to be managed, too.

“First there’s the question of when do you grease?,” says Larry Bergquist, senior engineer, advanced research and development, John Deere Construction & Forestry Division. “No one wants to get dirty first thing in the morning and it’s the last thing you’d want to do before you leave work, so timing becomes an issue. Then there are the production issues – inevitably the grease gun is empty so a 10-minute task becomes a 30-minute task as you go hunt for grease.”

Add to that the uncertainty that you’ve done the job right even if you’ve done the job consistently. “Many people grease a joint until the grease comes out of the joint,” says Bill Lewis, executive engineering ambassador with Advanced Manufacturing Institute, which partnered with Deere on NeverGrease. “You still don’t know how consistently that grease got all around between the pin and the bushing.”

Pain points
And so as they started developing what eventually became the NeverGrease pin joints, Deere engineers knew they were addressing what the company calls customer “pain points.” The design team initially thought the project would primarily focus on giving loader pin joints longer life. “We had seen a variety of ways customers were trying to extend pin joint life,” Bergquist says. “Some were greasing twice a day and in multiple positions, such as with the bucket flat and with the bucket dumped.”

Through further discussions with customers, however, another equally troubling problem cropped up: variation in pin joint life. “This would occur even in the same model machines doing the same application,” Bergquist says. Customers also expressed frustration at the difficulty of ensuring all pin joints on a machine receive the consistent greasing needed to deliver long life.

“While one pin joint may be close to 100 percent worn, others could be at the 60 or 75 percent wear level,” adds Mark Stender, Deere’s engineering supervisor, four-wheel drive loaders. “There’s not enough wear to replace them, but they won’t make it to the next scheduled pin joint replacement. You end up leaving a lot on the table.”

“And the quality of daily greasing is largely responsible for this variation in pin joint life,” Bergquist says. “Once the damage starts, the pin joint is on a path to a shorter life.”