Earlier this month Unverferth announced it had won an AE50 design award for its tracked Equalizer SP undercarriage, which is available on some grain cart models.
The AE50 design awards is an annual event sponsored by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). It recognizes 50 product innovations in the areas of agricultural, food, and biological systems. The judges select the 50 systems they feel best advance engineering for these industries.
The Equalizer SP track leaves a pretty big footprint. It’s 50 inches wide by 128 inches long, which gives it over 88 square feet of ground contact (44 feet on each side) for maximum flotation.
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For maintaining maximum ground contact, this extra-long long track design features cambering of the end wheels, with 20 degrees of front-to-rear movement along with nine degrees of side-to-side movement, in addition to the cambering action of the central mounting pivot.
The mid-wheels can pivot up to 16 degrees front-to-rear, to keep the track following the ground contours over rough terrain.
“In addition to the cambering (front-rear and side-to-side) action of the central track pivot point, the SP version adds cambering action to the front and rear sets of bogie/end wheels for increased ground contact,” Jerry Ecklund, communications manager at Unverferth, says.
“There are also two horizontally mounted urethane springs for cushioning the load located near the top, centre section on each side.”
The Equalizer SP track is available as an option on the largest Brent double-auger grain cart models 2598, 2098, which offer 2,500 and 2,000 bushel capacities, and the 2,000 bushel Unverferth dual-auger model 2020.
An auto-greaser system is standard equipment, which lubricates the pivot points to minimize daily maintenance.
